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THE   ETHICS   OF   LITERARY   ART 


THE 


Ethics  of  Literary  Art 


THE   CAREW   LECTURES 

FOR    1893 
HARTFORD  THEOLOGICAL  SEMINARY 


BY 

Maurice  Thompson 

Author   of    "A   Tallahassee   Girl,"    "Sylvan   Secrets,' 
"Songs  of  Fair  Weather,"  "Poems,"  etc. 


\6  R  A  rtT^V 

UN  TY 

UFORJ 


Hartford,  Conn. 

•fcartforD  Seminars  press 

1893 


■ 


Copyright,  1893 

By  the  HARTFORD  SEMINARY  PRESS 


Press  of  The  Case,  Lock-wood  <&■»  Brainard  Co. 


*THHE  matter  of  the  following  pages  was  delivered 
in  three  lectures,  and  it  will  not  be  hard  for  the 
reader  to  find  the  lines  of  division.  A  different  plan 
might  have  been  followed  had  my  purpose  originally 
been  a  book.  Still  I  have  not  felt  it  necessary  to  recast 
any  part  of  the  work,  and  in  arbitrarily  dividing  my 
discussion  into  three  parts,  it  came  easy  to  make 
Conception,  Composition,  and  Expression  stand,  in 
the  order  natned,  as  themes  for  successive  treatment. 

No  careful  reader  will  need  to  be  told  that  my  aim 
has  been  at  suggestion,  and  that  I  have  not  hesitated 
to  sacrifice  the  graces  of  diction  in  order  to  say  with 
fewest  words  what  might  have  been  turned  to  excellent 
account  in  the  way  of  mere  literature. 

My  subject  covers  the  whole  field  of  morals  j  for 
life  and  literature  cannot  be  separated  so  as  to  say 
that  what  is  vicious  in  life  is  harmlessly  delectable  in 
literature.  We  live  life  to  enjoy  it ;  we  make  and 
read  literature  to  enjoy  it.  In  either  case  enjoyment  is 
not  necessarily  a  light  matter.     It  is  a  serious  matter 


129003 


6  Author's  Note 

in  the  long  run;  for  down  the  centuries  we  grow 
toward  what  most  delights  us. 

I  do  not  regard  ethics  with  a  long  face  and  a 
drooping  lip.  Right-doing  is  not  such  a  doleful  thing 
that  we  need  groan  and  look  as  if  God-forsaken  at 
mention  of  it.  Like  all  precious  substances,  honor 
comes  high  if  we  count  as  valuable  what  we  have 
to  give  up  for  it.  The  little  we  own  of  it  may  be 
made  to  go  a  long  ways  if  we  do  not  care  to  buy  any 
more.  Most  of  us  have  enough  to  make  us  quite 
aware  of  what  duty  is. 

I  have  considered  chiefly  imaginative  literature  in 
this  discussion,  and  have  assumed  that  my  suggestions 
are  sufficiently  connected  to  form  the  skeleton  of  a 
theory,  critical  and  philosophical,  which  may  be  filled 
out  and  clothed  by  the  student. 

M.   T. 

Sherwood  Place, 

Crawfordsville,  Indiana, 

August,  i8gj. 


THE  ETHICS  OF  LITERARY  ART 


OSEPH  ADDISON  undertook 
to  define  critical  taste  in 
literature,  and  called  it  "that 
faculty  of  the  soul  which  discerns 
the  beauties  of  an  author  with  pleasure,  and 
the  imperfections  with  dislike."  But  what  is 
the  distinguishing  mark  between  "beauties" 
and  "imperfections"?  If  ethics  is  the  "art 
of  conduct,"  it  steps  in  to  suggest  moral 
responsibility.  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  that  flower 
of  manhood,  declared  that  the  end  of  all 
earthly  learning  must  be  "virtuous  action"; 
and  that  the  chief  function  of  art  seemed 
to  be  the  engendering  of  good  impulses, — 
"it  moveth  one  to  do  that  which  it  doth 
teach."  Certainly  this  moving  power  is  our  test 
of  genius.  But  too  often  genius  sets  its  face 
the  wrong  way,  and  then,  if  we  are  moved  by 


8  The  Ethics  of 

it,  our  impulse  is  toward  evil.  An  attack  upon 
our  sensibility  is  more  dangerous  than  one  upon 
our  mere  intellectuality ;  the  secret  sources 
of  action,  no  matter  what  materialists  may  guess, 
lie  deeper  than  the  brain.  We  may  not  find 
the  seat  of  moral  pleasure  in  any  particular 
nerve-cell,  dissect  no  matter  how  carefully. 
Men  of  easy  leisure  can  perhaps  afford  to  enjoy 
theories  as  a  sort  of  luxuries,  as  the  gourmand 
enjoys  his  p&tt  de  foie  gras ;  but  in  active, 
militant  life  most  of  us  must  crush  facts 
together,  and  knead  them  rapidly  into  available 
forms  of  aliment  for  body  and  soul.  And  it 
is  a  rule  of  Nature  that  what  is  good  for  the 
body  is  good  for  the  soul.  Health  in  the 
broadest  sense  is  the  state  of  happiness. 
Ethics,  therefore,  has  perfect  health  in  view ; 
a  sound  pure  body  and  a  sound  pure  mind  with 
which  to  pursue  the  conduct  of  life.  What 
is  good  for  the  soul  is  good  for  the  body. 

I  assume  that  human  ethics  is  the  per- 
fection of  selfishness — but  the  selfishness  of 
the  perfect   man  who  can  see  that   the   good 


Literary  Art  9 

of  all  mankind  is  his  good,  and  that  the  only 
way  to  do  self  the  highest  service  is  to  serve 
the  race.  To  accept  individual  happiness,  a 
variable  commodity  measured  by  dispositions 
as  different  as  persons,  and  make  it  the  criterion, 
would  be  to  embrace  anarchy.  The  wholesome 
notion  of  right  must  be  human,  not  personal. 

If  ethics  broadly  stated  is  the  art  of  con- 
duct, in  our  present  discussion  we  shall  find 
it  to  be  the  conduct  of  art.  And  if  human 
happiness,  in  the  highest  sense,  is  the  end 
of  ethics,  no  one  will  doubt  that  the  ethical 
end  of  art  is  the  same.  To  please  the  most 
perfectly  organized  and  most  nobly  refined 
human  taste  would  be  the  aim  of  true  art,  as  it 
is  the  ethical  desire  to  have  all  mankind  fitted 
to  enjoy  true  art.  In  this  view  the  ethical 
and  the  aesthetical  lines  coincide  throughout. 

Many  persons  nurse  a  remarkable  fear  of 
didactic  art ;  but  these  are  not  clear  thinkers. 
All  art  is  didactic,  positively  or  negatively, 
and  wields  an  influence  by  attraction  or  repul- 
sion.    Perhaps  it  would  be  better  to  say  that 


io  The  Ethics  of 

every  form  of  art  creation  attracts  us  toward 
or  away  from  that  equilibrium  of  good  which 
is  the  perfection  of  human  conduct. 

I  note  that  certain  critics,  who  in  one 
J  way  or  another  are  apologists  for  immoral 
literature,  seem  fond  of  the  phrase,  "  artistic 
conscience."  As  if  the  artist  must  have  a 
conscience  different  from  that  of  any  other 
good  man !  He  is  a  coward  who  in  any  exi- 
gency makes  his  own  case  a  special  one.  The 
moral  responsibility  of  the  artist  offers  no 
secret  and  private  avenues  of  confession  and 
avoidance,  and  if  it  does,  a  true  man  ought 
to  be  too  proud  to  use  them.  In  literature, 
as  in  every  other  sphere  of  human  conduct,  we 
must  have  vast  charity  for  the  man,  but  no 
charity  for  the  man's  evil.  Proper  critical  ap- 
preciation of  Shelley's  poetry,  for  example,  does 
not  involve  any  such  reckless  eulogy  of  Shel- 
ley's character  as  has  been  the  recent  vogue  in 
America  and  England.  Charity  covers  faults, 
but  it  never  lies  about  them  or  excuses  them. 
Ethics  draws  no  distinction  between  the  wife- 


Literary  Art  n 

murderer  who  cleans  stables  or  keeps  a  dive, 
and  the  wife-murderer  who  writes  a  "  Prometheus 
Unbound,"  or  an  "Ode  to  a  Skylark."  The 
right  of  the  aristocrat  is  not  available  as  a 
shield  against  the  operation  of  moral  responsi- 
bility. The  glamour  of  genius  cannot  blind 
the  eyes  of  God. 

It  has  ever  been  the  function  of  evil  to 
progress  by  means  of  fascination,  and  this 
fascination  is  loosely  and  mistakenly  regarded 
as  pleasure  or  happiness.  The  thrill  of  the  \S 
unholy  is  mistaken  for  the  calm  and  lofty 
ecstasy  of  pure  joy.  Ethics  does  not  recognize 
the  legitimacy  of  evil  delights,  come  from  what 
source  they  may.  The  making  of  a  poem 
which  appeals  to  base  sympathies,  no  matter 
how  perfect  the  art,  is  as  vile  an  act  as  though 
it  were  vulgarly  done  in  prose.  Our  conception 
of  the  notion  of  art  takes  its  color  from  the 
surroundings  we  give  to  it.  J  If  we  deny  it  an 
ethical  environment,  we  make  the  artist  a 
being  specially  privileged  to  do  evil  for  art's 
sake.      Such   a   conception   robs   the   creative 


12  The  Ethics  of 

act  of  every  connection  with  the  sources  of 
true  conscience,  and  sets  artistic  results  apart 
as  excrescences  on  the  substance  of  life.  If 
the  poet,  for  example,  is  an  agent  with  power 
to  affect  the  currents  of  human  conduct,  what 
law  of  nature  exempts  him  from  the  common 
obligation  to  affect  them  in  a  way  to  do  the 
greatest  good  to  the  greatest  number  ?  A 
ribald  song  may  appeal  to  a  vast  audience ;  it 
may  have  a  haunting  melody ;  but  is  it  justi- 
fied? 

It  is  in  one  of  the  plays  of  Aristophanes, 
"The  Birds,"  that  a  nightingale  sings  and,  as 
one  of  the  listeners  remarks,  "  makes  the  wilder- 
ness sweet  with  tender  breath  of  music." 
Here  is  a  conception  of  pure  and  wholesome 
art  in  the  wilderness  of  life ;  it  breathes  a  civil- 
izing sweet  round  about.  The  Greeks  called 
the  Muses"  the  lamps  of  the  earth,"  as  if  to 
make  them  guides  to  lead  out  of  darkness;  and 
this  is  the  key-note  of  Greek  art,  the  fine  note  of 
open  illumination.  Matthew  Arnold  denied  to 
the  Greeks   that   magic   of   genius    which   he 


Literary  Art  13 

found  in  the  Celts ;  but  what  magic  is  more 
sure  or  more  potent  than  this  light  direct, 
this  surprise  of  sound  and  joyous  conception? 
Mind,  I  do  not  here  speak  of  subject-matter, 
nor  of  treatment,  but  of  the  conception  of  the 
function  of  art,  —  namely,  to  lead  by  the  cord 
of  delight. 

Suddenly  the  question,  Whither  is  the 
young  mind  led  by  unbridled  "art  for  art's  ^ 
sake  "  ?  I  freely  grant  full  sway  to  the  phrase, 
"a  clean  mind  can  cleanly  contemplate  evil"; 
but  can  a  clean  mind  be  delectated  with  what 
is  unclean  ?  Surely  we  may  discern  the  dis- 
tinction here  suggested.  Youth  is  the  period 
of  happiness  and  desire,  and  to  youth  art  makes 
its  most  moving  appeal.  Take  the  novel,  the 
most  popular  form  of  art,  and  you  note  that  it 
is  the  young  who  read  and  are  swayed  by 
powerful  fiction.  The  tremendous  fascination 
of  evil  gives  to  an  immoral  novel  an  impetus 
in  the  grooves  of  commerce.  Young  people, 
even  the  purest  of  them,  are  curious  to  know 
what   lies   between  the  lids  of  a  scarlet  book. 


14  The  Ethics  of 

A  high  ethical  conception  cannot  license  art 
to  generate  such  curiosity  and  then  feed  it. 
But  certain  artists  say  that  their  business 
is  not  to  furnish  food  for  babes.  Very  well. 
Is  the  adult  liberated  to  delectate  himself  with 
evil  ?  By  what  ethical  law  can  the  distinction 
be  recognized  ?  If  art  is  a  factor  in  the  con- 
duct of  life,  our  conception  of  it  must  be  that 
it  symbolizes  an  act  of  the  collective  human 
body  and  expresses  an  aspiration.  In  every 
area  of  human  action,  except,  as  it  would  seem, 
the  field  of  fine  art,  we  are  required  to  avoid 
evil  aspirations  and  to  shun  the  company  of 
vice  and  filth.  Even  the  crudest  observation 
and  the  most  rudimentary  experience  of  life 
convince  us  that  we  must  grow  like  what  we 
contemplate,  and  that  intellectual  associations 
give  color  to  the  soul.  There  are  no  more  inti- 
mate and  subtile  intellectual  associations  than 
those  effected  through  literature.  The  man  or 
woman  we  meet  in  a  book  walks  into  our 
sanctuary  of  character  and  writes  maxims  on  its 
walls.      If  we  are  libertines    in   art,  what  are 


Literary  Art  15 

we  in  the  finest  tissues  of  character  ?  The  con- 
duct of  the  imagination  is  the  chemistry  of 
life.  Physiological  study  leads  more  and  more 
toward  the  conclusion  that  thought-habit  largely 
influences  what  we  may  call  nervous  alimenta- 
tion, and  nothing  is  more  certainly  known  than 
that  character-quality  depends  upon  the  health 
of  the  nerve  centers.  It  is  therefore  of  ethical 
importance  to  study  the  connection  between 
the  development  of  art  and  the  evolution  of 
character. 

One  theory  is  that  civilization  shapes  art  to 
suit  its  changes.  The  other  theory  views  art 
as  a  factor  in  developing  civilization.  A  sound 
thinker  who  has  read  history  and  observed  life 
will  blend  the  two  theories  into  a  reciprocal 
one;  but  the  ethical  importance  of  art  will 
be  found  in  its  influence  in  shaping  conduct. 
Without  this  influence  it  is  a  mere  efflores- 
cence of  life.  To  my  mind  genius  loses  its 
salient  value  when  it  takes  the  attitude  of 
accident  and  poses  as  a  mere  lusus  7iatnrce, 
like   a   gall-nut   on  an   oak  leaf,  or  a  wart  on 


1 6  The  Ethics  of 

your  hand.  I  like  to  regard  it  as  a  healthy- 
fruit  tree,  bearing  wholesome  and  invigorating 
fruit ;  a  perfect  soul  working  consciously  and 
with  conscience  to  delight  and  refine  all  other 
souls. 

And  yet  my  conception  of  art  does  not 
recognize  obvious  didactics,  or  accept  the 
limitations  of  any  arbitrary  system  of  morals. 
The  key  to  art  is  taste,  and  taste  is  the  finest 
secret  of  conduct.  Behind  taste  lies  moral  bias, 
from  which  the  initial  impulse  of  every  art 
movement  springs;  for  it  is  moral  bias  that 
controls  every  conception  of  the  form  and  the 
function  of  art.  This  bias  gets  into  the  air 
of  an  age ;  it  is  miasm  or  ozone ;  it  is  a  co- 
efficient operating  with  conscience  or  inspiring 
irresponsible  revolt.  Now,  the  deepest  reach 
of  art  is  to  engender  a  right  bias,  so  that  good 
taste  shall  become  hereditary.  Says  De  Quin- 
cey,  "  the  writer  is  not  summoned  to  convince, 
but  to  persuade";  and  Joubert  adds,  "it  is  not 
enough  that  a  work  be  good ;  it  must  be  done 
by  a  good  author."      At  the  present   moment 


Literary  Art  17 

of  history  we  seem  to  be  hesitating  whether  or 
not,  after  all,  literature  shall  be  regarded  as  a 
mere  mode  of  commercial  motion.  "The  first 
value  of  a  book,"  said  a  publisher,  "  is  its  sala- 
bility."  This  is  a  conception  which  destroys 
every  imaginable  basis  of  conscience  in  literary 
life,  unless  we  can  make  good  books  salable; 
for  the  publisher  holds  command. 

Both  church  and  state  have  tried  to  educate 
taste  by  means  of  legal  censorship.  The  prac- 
tice has  been  as  futile  as  the  principle  is 
despicable.  Indeed,  the  circulation  of  a  bad 
book  is  always  urged  to  the  maximum  by  legal 
prohibition.  Human  perversity  is  an  element 
in  every  problem  of  reform.  A  man  told  me 
that  he  never  thirsted  for  whisky  save  when  in 
a  prohibition  state.  To  reform  conduct  we 
must  educate  life.  If  a  man  is  suffering  from 
blood-poisoning,  we  do  not  cure  him  by  local 
treatment ;  we  try  to  cleanse  his  whole  system. 
Ethics  must  regard  the  collective  body  as  one 
patient  whose  disease  is  constitutional.  The 
quack  doctor   panders  to  a  maudlin   weakness 


1 8  The  Ethics  of 

of  chronic  invalids.  So  in  art  a  certain  school 
of  quacks,  like  Ibsen  and  Tolstoif,  fatten  upon 
the  liberality  of  hysterical  souls. 

Speaking  of  false  critics,  sturdy  and  right- 
minded  John  Dryden  said :  "  All  that  is  dull, 
insipid,  languishing,  and  without  sinews  in  a 
poem  they  call  an  imitation  of  nature."  In  our 
day  the  so-called  realists  answer  to  Dryden's 
description.  They  boast  of  holding  up  a  mir- 
ror to  nature ;  but  they  take  care  to  give 
preference  always  to  ignoble  nature.  They 
never  hold  up  their  mirror  to  heroic  nature. 
Have  you  observed  how,  as  a  man  becomes  a 
realist,  he  grows  fond  of  being  narrow  and  of 
playing  with  small  specialties  ?  Have  you 
thought  out  the  secret  force  which  controls 
the  movements  of  this  so-called  realism,  and 
always  keeps  its  votaries  sneering  at  heroic 
life,  while  they  revel  in  another  sort  of  life, 
which  fitly  to  characterize  here  would  be  im- 
proper? I  can  tell  you  what  that  force  is. 
It  is  unbelief  in  ideal  standards  of  human 
aspiration,  and   it   is  impatient    scorn   of  that 


Literary  Art  19 

higher  mode  of  thought  which  has  given  the 
world  all  the  greatest  creations  of  imaginative 
genius.  It  is  a  long  cry  from  Homer  and 
Aeschylus  and  Shakespeare  and  Scott  to  Zola 
and  Ibsen  and  Tolsto'f  and  Flaubert;  but  it  is 
exactly  measured  by  the  space  between  a  voice 
which  utters  the  highest  note  of  its  time  and 
civilization,  and  one  that  utters  the  lowest.  I 
say  that  these  modern  realists  utter  the  cry  of 
our  civilization's  lowest  and  most  belated  ele- 
ment ;  and  they  call  it  the  cry  of  modern 
science.  But  science  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
Science  never  disports  itself  in  the  baleful  light 
of  mere  coarseness ;  nor  does  it  choose  dry  or 
commonplace  investigations  simply  because 
they  are  dry  and  commonplace.  In  its  true 
sphere  science  aims  to  lift  us  above  mysteries. 
The  same  may  be  said  of  all  the  great  masters 
of  art ;  they  lift  us  above  the  mire  of  degrading 
things.  True,  we  find  coarseness  amounting 
to  what  is  foul  in  all  the  ancient  classics,  and 
even  in  Chaucer  and  Shakespeare ;  but  we  can- 
not take  shelter  behind  these  to  cast  forth  upon 


20  The  Ethics  of 

the  world  our  own  surplus  of  filth.  The  custom 
of  critics  is  in  charity  to  refer  the  obscenities  of 
old  writers  to  the  moral  taste  of  the  time. 
Shall  we  credit  our  own  civilization  with  an 
appetency  for  the  Kreihtzer  Sonata,  Leaves 
of  Grass,  and  Madame  B ovary?  Have  we 
moved  no  farther  than  this  during  these  centu- 
ries of  Christianity  ? 

I  know  absolutely  nothing  about  theology, 
which  is  doubtless  to  be  counted  in  reckoning 
what  I  come  to,  and  I  frankly  say  that  I  could 
not,  to  save  me,  tell  the  difference  between  one 
creed  and  another;  but  I  have  it  clearly  in 
mind  that  Christianity  is  responsible  for  our 
civilization,  and  is  the  datum-line  to  which  we 
must  refer  in  all  our  measurements.  Our 
enlightenment  may  be  imaginary,  the  gleam 
of  a  myth,  but  it  comes  from  the  Star  of 
Bethlehem. 

Every  reader  is  aware  that  there  exists 
a  certain  strained  relation  between  art  and 
moral  responsibility.  The  first  impulse  of 
a  solicitous  parent  is  toward  forbidding  novels 


Literary  Art  21 

and  dramatic  literature  to  his  children.  The 
college  and  the  pulpit  wrestle  with  a  giant 
doubt  in  the  matter  of  approving  the  current 
conception  of  art.  We  all  feel  that  the  con- 
temporary artistic  influence  is  subtly  opposed 
to  the  ethical  verities.  We  find  that  in  fiction 
and  poetry  we  are  hobnobbing  with  persons 
with  whom  we  could  not  in  real  life  bear  a 
moment's  interview.  It  is  not  so  much  the 
scenes  and  characters  chosen ;  we  might  regard 
these,  as  in  real  life,  with  a  deep  regret ;  but  the 
conception  of  art  and  its  function  represented  by 
such  a  choice  of  subject  and  treatment  suggests 
a  vicious  trend  of  life. 

Matthew  Arnold's  theory  of  "  sweetness  and 
light "  may  be  a  trifle  flabby  when  put  to  the 
average  test  of  practical  experience ;  yet  to 
irradiate  light  and  to  instill  sweetness  can  never 
be  amiss;  this  indeed  seems  to  me  the  only 
excuse  for  art.  Culture  must,  however,  have 
its  root  nourished  in  a  stronger  soil  than  that 
of  mere  amiability.  Art  should  stand  for  more 
than  an  expression  of  good-natured  commentary 


22  The  Ethics  of 

on  current  life,  or  of  ill-natured  caricature  of 
humanity's  frailties.  "  What  is  realism  ?  "  in- 
quired a  young  woman  the  other  day.  Her 
friend  answered,  "  It's  writing  what  we  are  too 
clean  to  speak,  and  reading  about  what  we  would 
blush  to  look  at.  It  is  going  in  books  where 
to  go  in  actual  life  would  disgrace  us."  Prudery 
does  not  appeal  to  a  sound  soul,  and  our  strict- 
ures on  art  ought  not  to  be  different  from  our 
strictures  on  life.  Our  associations  in  art 
should  not  be  lower  than  our  associations  in  life. 
Indeed,  to  me  the  main  service  of  imaginative 
activities  is  in  giving  higher  experiences  than 
ordinary  life  can  afford.  In  life  we  aim  at  the 
higher  life ;  in  art,  why  not  at  the  higher  life  ? 
The  most  abject  prudery  is  that  which  makes 
us  ashamed  to  insist  upon  cleanness  and  sound- 
ness ;  the  vilest  dishonesty  suggests  that  we 
account  for  literary  villainy  on  the  score  of 
compulsion  by  "artistic  conscience."  Evil  is 
the  great  foe  of  true  happiness ;  but  art  must 
give  canvas-room  for  this  dark  figure  with  all 
its  scowls  and  all  its  fascinating  smiles  ;  it  has  a 


Literary  Art  23 

mighty  value  when  set  over  against  goodness 
to  the  effect  that  the  conception  holds  fast  to 
the  right.  But  let  us  not  pass  the  limit  of 
freedom  into  the  domain  of  license.  In  life 
we  face  the  ills  and  evils  of  our  state ;  we 
must  do  the  same  in  art,  and  in  both  life  and 
art  there  must  be  moral  responsibility.  If  in 
writing  a  book  we  must  not  steal  the  thought- 
work  of  a  fellow,  surely  in  the  same  pages 
we  must  avoid  breaking  the  other  nine  com- 
mandments. Still  I  have  known  a  man  who 
complained  loud  and  long  of  the  immorality  of 
a  publisher  who  had  failed  to  make  accurate 
copyright  reports  of  sales  in  the  matter  of  a 
vilely  impure  novel.  This  is  the  special  plead- 
ing which  in  another  form  demands  that  the 
artist  clothe  himself  before  painting  a  naked 
picture. 

Plato's  dreams  and  Aristotle's  facts  may 
come  at  last  into  coincidence,  and  yet  Plato's 
conception  is  the  only  safe  ground  of  art.  An 
imagination  which  never  goes  above  "scientific 
dissections  "  may  state  conditions  ;  but  a  flash 


24  The  Ethics  of 

of  empyrean  fire  cuts  through  conditions  and 
illuminates  the  remote  high  area  of  the  uncon- 
ditional. Plato's  attitude  was  supremely  artis- 
tic ;  Aristotle's  posture  was  realistic.  The 
utilitarian,  who  measures  life  by  material  units, 
is  a  peripatetic ;  the  true  artist  is  platonic,  and 
wherever  we  find  him  indicating  an  ethical  con- 
ception, it  is  a  universal  one.  The  old  Dorian 
notion  was  the  elemental  one,  that  morality  was 
not  of  the  individual  but  of  the  people,  and  this 
is  the  poet's  notion  in  all  ages. 

But  how  is  ethical  leaven  to  work  in  literary 
art  ?  We  cannot  brook  legal  censorship,  and, 
if  we  could,  the  remedy  would  be  worse  than 
the  disease.  Freedom  must  be  next  to  absolute 
in  letters.  The  one  feasible  scheme  of  ethical 
reform  is  education.  And  here  arises  the 
abrupt  question,  By  what  particular  channel  of 
education  can  literary  taste  be  most  readily 
purified  ?  It  is  safe  to  assume  that  a  whole- 
some conception  of  art  is  the  first  stage  of 
reform  needed,  and  I  suggest  that  sound  criti- 
cism would  be  a  potent  factor  in  the  work ;  but 


Literary  Art  25 

I  speak  of  criticism  in  its  most  liberal  sense, 
certainly  not  in  the  sense  which  would  make 
the  critic  a  mere  friendly  purveyor  of  appre- 
ciation, a  sycophant  self-trained  to  lick  boots. 
The  zealous  fault-hunter,  to  be  sure,  is  not  a 
critic ;  no  more  is  the  fault-dodger.  I  like  to 
read  Sainte-Beuve  ;  but  I  lay  at  his  door  and 
Wordsworth's  much  of  the  insignificance  of 
literary  art  at  this  moment.  The  conception  of 
art  in  the  body  of  Wordsworth's  poetry  and 
the  notion  of  criticism  in  Sainte-Beuve's  essays 
have  easily  formed  the  whey  of  commonplace 
and  the  curd  of  "appreciation." 

It  is  the  habit  of  certain  editors,  I  am  told, 
to  have  their  book  reviews  written  by  persons 
who  will  be  sure  to  praise  each  work.  This  is 
but  another  expression  of  that  irresponsibility 
behind  which  literary  folk  delight  to  huddle. 
The  same  weakness  affects  the  whole  modern 
theory  of  criticism.  What  avails  teaching  if  in 
the  same  school  every  theory,  no  matter  how 
debauching,  has  its  expert  apologist?  If  criti- 
cism   is    nothing   more   than   sympathetic    ex- 


26  The  Ethics  of 

position  by  a  special  pleader,  it  amounts  simply 
to  the  critic's  saying:  "I  can  make  this  artist's 
purpose  and  meaning  plainer  and  more  enjoy- 
able than  he  could  himself." 

Criticism  is  the  measuring  of  conduct  — 
the  conduct  of  life,  the  conduct  of  art.  Viewed 
broadly,  it  is  the  fine  residuum  of  sound  morals 
left  over  after  the  solution  of  ethical  problems. 
|  One  man  is  not  a  critic;  it  is  the  intelligent 
majority.  Say  what  we  may,  the  average  mind 
is  the  triumphant  criterion ;  by  it  life  wins  or 
loses  in  all  that  concerns  the  body  of  humanity. 
What  does  not  concern  humanity  as  a  body 
ought  not  to  concern  any  man.  We  are  the 
Adam  and  Eve  of  to-day  ;  it  is  mankind  that  must 
make  the  long  run,  not  the  individual.  If  we 
suffer  from  the  old  Adam's  fall,  what  countless 
millions  must  writhe  far  down  the  future 
because  we,  the  new  Adam,  ate  a  more  deadly 
fruit!  Verily,  the  day  is  ours  and  the  light  of  it. 
It  will  be  felt  that  I  am  suggesting  imma- 
nent criticism,  the  floating,  general,  vital  im- 
pression out  of  which  the  elusive  but  powerful 


Literary  Art  27 

influence  of  art  is  so  largely  drawn.  What 
makes  a  book  popular  ?  No  number  of  favor- 
able reviews  can  do  it  —  no  amount  of  advertis- 
ing or  puffing.  The  secret  lies  in  touching  the 
nerve  of  average  taste.  Every  proposition  sub- 
mitted to  mankind  is  at  last  solved  by  this 
average  immanent  criticism.  Artists  may 
rebel;  but  the  democracy  of  human  economy 
always  prevails,  and  that  picture,  that  poem, 
that  story  which  appeals  to  and  satisfies  a  com- 
mon and  steadfast  human  longing  is  the  lasting 
and  influential  one.  Ethics,  then,  as  it  regards 
art,  must  respect  the  average,  and  the  ethical 
aim  must  be  to  lift  the  line  of  mean  human 
aspiration.  To  have  no  privileged  class  and  to 
admit  no  special  pleading  in  favor  of  genius 
by  which  strict  moral  responsibility  may  be 
avoided  in  art,  are  prerequisites  of  critical 
honesty.  The  average  mind  may  be  easily 
convinced  of  the  justice  of  this  democratic 
rule,  and  to  this  end  should  education  tend. 
The  higher  we  urge  the  mean  level  of  immanent 
human   criticism,  the  higher  will  rise  the  sur- 


28  The  Ethics  of 

face  of  human  conduct.      The   conduct  of  art 
has  no  special  exemption. 

The  chief  office  of  art  is  to  teach  through 
fascination,  not  openly  and  dictatorially,  but 
almost  unawares.  Its  appeal  is  the  charm  of 
beauty,  the  lure  of  symmetry,  the  perfume  of 
truth ;  or  it  is  the  imperious  fascination  of  evil 
clothed  in  a  counterfeit  divinity.  This  is  the 
old  demarcation  between  good  and  evil.  I 
repeat  that  neither  genius  nor  art  can  success- 
fully slink  out  of  responsibility  through  a 
special  side  gate.  To  prevent  this  cowardice 
the  old  Greeks  invented  dialectics  and  discussed 
life  vigorously  in  their  schools.  We  may  say 
that  they  were  heathens  ;  but  what  would  they 
say  of  us  with  our  Christian  theories  and  our 
pagan  practices  ?  Nakedness,  physical  and 
spiritual,  in  art  was  a  sincere  reflex  of  Greek 
religion,  Greek  civilization.  It  was  uncon- 
sciously projected.  Not  so  with  us ;  when  we 
go  naked  it  is  done  self-consciously,  with  the 
full  understanding  that  nakedness  is  not  decent. 
We  do  it  in  sheer  defiance  of  immanent  criticism. 


Literary  Art  29 

Is  there  a  man  or  a  woman  in  the  world 
who  believes  that  any  person  ever  read  a  novel 
or  a  poem  for  the  stark  purpose  of  moral 
reform?  Do  you  ever  read  a  novel  expecting 
thereby  to  wash  away  some  stain  from  your 
character  ?  Be  honest  and  answer  that  in  every 
quest  pleasure  is  your  goal.  From  the  notion 
of  heaven  down  to  the  wish  for  a  tin  whistle 
your  aim  is  pleasure.  You  imagine  you  would 
enjoy  heaven;  you  feel  sure  that  a  tin  whistle 
would  delight  you.  If  you  buy  Anna  Karinina 
or  Madame  Bovary,  it  is  for  delectation  and 
not  for  personal  purification.  Speaking  of  cant, 
what  cant  is  worse  than  that  of  the  artist  who 
entertains  you  at  the  table  of  vice  with  the 
avowed  purpose  of  sweetening  your  life  ? 

It  is  that  wonderful  Joubert  again  who  says, 
11  Naturally,  the  soul  repeats  to  itself  all  that  is 
beautiful  or  all  that  seems  so."  The  writer 
writes  what  he  likes,  the  reader  reads  what  is 
to  his  taste.  Ah,  taste!  there  is  the  found- 
ation. Can  you  for  a  moment  credit  any  man's 
statement  that  he  reads  for  delectation  and  yet 


30  The  Ethics  of 

against  his  taste  ?  Perhaps  I  am  a  Philistine ; 
at  all  events  I  do  not  hesitate  here  flatly 
to  charge  insincerity.  Who  could  possibly  be 
more  hopelessly  insincere  than  the  avowedly 
pure  woman  who  tells  you  that  she  has  fortified 
her  virtue  by  reading  Ibsen's  picture  of  Hedda 
Gabler  ?  Woman,  you  have  taken  Ibsen's  arm 
and  have  gone  with  him  into  vile  company  and 
have  been  delighted  with  the  novelty  of  it.  The 
smack  of  hell  is  sweet  to  your  lips,  as  it  was 
to  those  of  new-made  Eve.  It  would  be  strictly 
true  for  such  a  woman  to  say,  "Yes,  I  read 
these  novels  of  impure  passion,  and  there  is 
a  strain  in  my  taste  which  enjoys  these 
pictures  of  temptation  and  of  evil  pleasures. 
Secretly  I  like  a  peep  into  debauchery;  but 
then  I  hold  on  to  my  own  rectitude."  The 
word  "rectitude"  as  here  used  means  formal 
rectitude  of  life's  exterior ;  the  intrinsic  muscles 
have  responded  to  a  coarse  and  beastly  impulse. 
In  producing  works  of  art  having  evil  for 
their  source  of  fascination,  and  in  reading  such 
works,  we  are  tainting  the   most  secret  veins 


Literary  Art  31 

of  immanent  criticism.  Civilization  inevitably 
responds  to  these  influences  working  at  the 
farthest  tips  of  its  tenderest  roots.  Vitiate 
imagination  and  you  destroy  character.  No 
pure  woman  ever  wrote  a  fiction  of  illicit 
love ;  if  she  began  pure,  she  ended  soiled.  Her 
soul  followed  her  pen.  Druggists  and  physi- 
cians have  told  me  that  a  person  who  takes  to 
opium-eating  will  lie,  steal,  or  barter  body  and 
soul  for  a  morsel  of  dried  poppy-juice.  Never 
in  my  life  have  I  known  a  man  or  a  woman 
given  over  to  the  pleasure  of  writing  or  of 
reading  novels  based  on  illicit  love  who  did  not 
habitually  lie  to  avoid  the  application  of  per- 
sonal responsibility. 

To  the  perfectly  unbiased  observer  nothing 
is  clearer  than  that  forbidden  fruit  is  always  in 
demand,  and  will  be  as  long  as  human  perversity 
fortifies  human  animalism.  If  the  author  of 
Tess  of  the  U  Urbervilles  would  say  the  truth,  he 
would  flatly  confess  that  he  wrote  that  bril- 
liantly fascinating,  filthy  novel,  not  to  make 
poor  young  girls  cling  to  virtue,  not  to  prevent 


32  The  Ethics  of 

rich  young  men  from  being  villains  at  heart; 
but  to  make  a  fiction  that  would  appeal  to 
human  perversity  and  delectate  human  animal- 
ism. He  reckoned  safely ;  the  book  sold  al- 
most as  fast  as  whisky.  It  was  named  by  the 
author  "the  story  of  a  pure  woman."  This 
woman,  after  being  easily  led  to  shame  once 
prior  to  marriage,  fell  again  during  wedlock, 
and  then  committed  murder  and  was  executed. 
This  is  no  extreme  case ;  I  cite  it  as  typical. 
Nearly  all  of  the  critics  were  loud  in  praise  of 
this  novel  —  thousands  of  good  people  read  it. 
And  to  justify  themselves  both  critics  and 
readers  claimed  for  it  a  high  moral  influence. 
What  I  see  wrong  in  this  is  that  it  claims 
for  fiction  a  power  and  an  exemption  not  pos- 
sible to  real  life.  How  can  association  with 
immoral  and  debauching  people  and  conditions 
in  our  reading  differ  from  our  association  with 
them  in  life  ?  If  art  is  chiefly  for  delectation, 
is  it  not  a  species  of  debauchery  to  indulge  in 
art  which  takes  its  fascination  from  forbidden 
sources?     As    I   have   said,  human    perversity 


Literary  Art  33 

demands  the  forbidden.  A  publisher  told  me 
that  for  a  novel  to  gain  the  reputation  of  being 
written  in  the  highest  strain  of  art  and  yet  on 
a  subject  not  considered  clean  was  a  sure 
guaranty  of  success  ;  "and  yet,"  said  he,  "popu- 
lar sentiment  is  strong  against  such  books." 
Here  is  the  fascination  of  the  unclean  —  the 
very  fascination  which  it  is  the  duty  of  all  to 
avoid  and  which  it  is  the  highest  mission  of 
Christian  civilization  to  extinguish.  And  yet 
Christian  artists  demand  the  right  to  make 
commerce  of  this  same  evil  fascination,  and  in 
this  demand  they  are  upheld  by  Christian 
critics. 

In  a  word,  I  conclude  this  part  of  my  argu- 
ment by  propounding  a  question,  Has  the 
immanent  meaning  of  Christian  civilization  yet 
showed  itself  in  art  ?  Or,  negatively,  Is  not 
fine  art,  and  especially  literary  fine  art,  still 
^essentially  heathen  ?  Is  not  the  most  direct 
and  vigorous  appeal  of  current  poetry  and 
fiction  made  to  the  ancient,  elemental,  con- 
scienceless   substance    of   humanity  ?     One    of 


34  The  Ethics  of 

two  things  is  certainly  true,  —  the  artist  is 
specially  exempt  from  moral  responsibility,  or 
he  is  just  as  responsible  as  any  other  person. 
To  me  it  appears  that  the  commercial  value 
of  literary  filth  is  really  behind  every  argument 
in  favor  of  the  moral  force  assumed  by  authors 
and  critics  to  be  inherent  in  the  dramatic 
S  presentation  of  illicit  love.  We  must  admit 
that  novels  and  poems  on  this  subject  are  im- 
mensely fascinating  and  that  in  a  cold  com- 
mercial view  they  are  good  property.  In  the 
same  view  whisky  and  gambling  rooms  are 
excellent  investments.  Gilded  dives  pay  large 
dividends  in  the  lawful  currency.  St.  Peter's 
Church  has  fewer  visitors  than  Monte  Carlo. 
What  do  you  make  of  this?  Is  it  the  true 
conception  of  art  that  the  artist  may  live  in 
honor  by  the  same  appeal  which  enriches  the 
faro-dealer,  the  saloon-keeper,  and  the  princess 
of  a  bagnio  ?  Is  the  money  earned  by  writing 
and  selling  Tess  of  the  U  Urbervilles  one  whit 
cleaner  than  that  earned  by  any  other  play 
upon  the  human  weakness  for  unclean  things]? 


Literary  Art  35 

It  is  not  clear  why  a  feeling  should  prevail 
that,  to  be  robust,  art  must  show  a  great  deal 
of  vulgarity.  The  best  athlete  carries  but  little 
flesh,  and  I  find  that  fine  muscles  and  sound 
nerves  go  farther  than  fat.  Grossness,  indeed, 
is  as  far  removed  from  true  virility  as  one  pole 
from  the  other.  Mere  audacity  in  handling 
things  not  considered  by  the  spirit  of  our 
civilization  touchable  cannot  win  the  badge 
of  Homer  or  of  Horace.  Homer  sang  strictly 
within  the  spirit  of  his  age  and  voiced  its  char- 
acteristic aspiration.  Horace  did  no  violence 
to  the  civilization  that  inspired  him.  Full, 
close,  sympathetic  touch  with  Christianity  (not 
with  dry  dogma,  creed,  ritual,  or  sect,  or  denomi- 
nation), close  touch  with  Christianity,  I  say, 
can  give  the  only  true  conception  of  the  new 
art  of  our  just  dawning  era. 

You  will  observe  that  I  do  not  hesitate  to' 
speak  of  Christianity  as  distinct  from  church, 
priesthood,  theology,  and  formal  religion,  —  as  a 
mode  of  progress,  a  great  mood  of  civilization, 
broadening,  deepening,   warming   day  by  day. 


36  The  Ethics  of 

It  is  moving  toward  the  republic  in  every- 
thing; not  backward  toward  the  republic  of 
the  heathen,  but  forward  to  the  republic  of 
the  Christian.  Wherefore  the  conception  of 
art,  to  be  adequate,  must  apprehend  this  future 
while  availing  itself  of  the  past.  The  point 
where  the  old  orb  and  the  new  blend  the  rays 
of  warning  and  of  prophecy  is  the  true  focus  of 
inspiration.  We  must  know  where  we  are. 
There  is  no  return.  The  Greek  with  his 
jocund  heathen  song  is  dead;  gone  is  the 
heathen  grace  of  Virgil ;  gone  the  goatherd 
genius  from  the  fells  of  Sicily ;  gone  Anacreon, 
the  ruddy  bibber,  and  gone  the  strange  cry : 

*X1  irdl  irapOevtov  fiXeircov. 
Not  much  less  remote  echoes  the  Dantesque 
strain,  half  Christian,  half  heathen.  It  is  time 
for  the  key-note  of  our  era  to  sound;  it  is 
time  for  genius  to  speak  in  the  true,  in  the 
highest  terms  of  our.  civilization. 

"Well,"  says  some  practical  soul,  "when, 
where,  and  to  what  purpose?"  I  answer: 
When  we  make  for  genius  the  true  Christian 


Literary  Art  37 

atmosphere ;  in  that  atmosphere  will  he  thrive ; 
not  in  the  dust  of  dogma ;  not  in  the  twilight 
of  cathedrals  ;  not  yet  in  the  cramped  sanctuary 
of  tradition.  He  shall  inhale  the  rich  air,  which 
is  buoyant  with  the  significance  of  our  era,  and 
his  purpose  shall  be  the  good  of  the  brotherhood 
of  man. 

In  my  remarks  on  the  ethical  conception  of 
literary  art  I  have  tried  to  suggest  the  alien 
nature  of  the  prevailing  current  criticism  and 
to  refer  it  to  the  residual  heathenism  in  our 
civilization.  You  will  pardon  me  if  I  am  not 
relying  upon  lightness  of  touch.  An  earnest 
man  addressing  earnest  souls  need  not  avoid 
direct  expression  in  order  to  etherealize  phrases. 
I  have  assumed  that  a  civilization  generates  im- 
manent criticism  to  which  that  civilization's  art 
ought  to  conform  in  order  to  be  aesthetically 
and  ethically  adequate. 

There  are  periods  when  this  immanent  criti- 
cism is  smothered  by  factitious  and  alien  forces. 
The  Alexandrine  period  in  Greek  poetry  is  a 


38  The  Ethics  of 

typical  one.  There  art  almost  completely 
divorced  itself  from  the  human  soul  and  became 
a  mechanical  exhibit.  A  sound  thinker  would 
expect  this  aberration  of  criticism  to  be  attended 
by  a  thoroughly  artificial  life  as  devoid  as  possi- 
ble of  sincerity.  Alexandria  under  Philadelphus 
was  a  city  of  critics ;  but  then,  as  now,  the 
critic's  chief  concern  was  to  do  something  call- 
ing attention  to  himself.  The  richness  of  the 
Ptolemaean  civilization  was  wasted  on  mere  form 
which  really  expressed  nothing.  What  I  will 
call  the  sense  of  composition,  the  artistic  con- 
sciousness of  an  organism  to  be  spoken  into  life 
by  genius,  was  dormant.  At  the  great  school 
of  Philadelphus  phraseology  counted  for  every- 
thing ;  a  living  form  of  art-creation  was  not 
thought  of.  Even  Theocritus,  the  one  "  burn- 
ing mouth  of  the  muses  "  in  that  artificial  day, 
lost  his  sense  of  composition  at  the  gate  by 
which  he  entered  Alexandria. 

Before  then  the  Greeks  had  formed  their  art 
on  free  lines  guided  by  the  spirit  of  their 
religion.     What  the  word  "  freshness  "  best  inti- 


Literary  Art  39 

mates  hung  upon  their  thoughts  like  a  dew  of 
morning.  You  can  discover  nothing  alien  to 
Greek  civilization  in  Homer  or  Pindar  or  in  the 
fragments  of  Anakreon  and  Sappho.  Those 
poets  were  guided  by  the  immanent  criticism 
of  their  times,  and  so  they  voiced  absolute 
sincerity.  If  you  will  read  the  seventh  Idyl  of 
Theocritus,  you  will  be  aware  of  a  certain  some- 
thing, like  a  fruit-zest  or  a  root-pungence, 
which,  when  you  analyze  it,  seems  composite,  a 
mingling  of  many  ancient  savors  and  fragrances. 
Here  is  native  honey  brewed  directly  from  the 
innermost  nectaries  of  a  civilization.  The 
happy  Greek  had  not  yet  remodeled  the  syrinx 
of  Pan  to  suit  the  artificial  music  of  Alexandria. 
I  would  accept  this  Thalysia  by  Theocritus  as 
a  singularly  apt  illustration  of  the  limiting  in- 
fluence exerted  by  academical  criticism.  At 
the  time  of  its  writing  Theocritus  had  just 
reached  manhood  and  while  yet  fresh  from 
bathing  long  and  deep  in  the  Pierian  spring  of 
old  Greek  religion  was  just  at  the  margin  of  that 
African   desert  called  the  Alexandrian  school. 


40  The  Ethics  of 

After  that  idyl  he  wrote  nothing  of  real  value 
because  he  quit  the  field  of  true  artistic  con- 
science and  went  to  pose  for  favor  in  the  eyes 
of  incest  while  studying  the  forms  of  a  conven- 
tional artisanship.  Plainly  he  was  eager  to 
barter  conscience  for  gold ;  and  for  success  in 
literature  he  would  gladly  part  with  every  trace 
of  original  freshness  and  independence. 

With  the  apostacy  of  Theocritus,  Greek 
genius  came  down  from  the  slopes  of  Helicon 
and  merged  itself  for  ever  in  the  commonplace. 
What  Alexandrine  influence  was  to  Greek 
literature  the  so-called  realistic  influence  is  to 
the  literature  of  to-day.  We  might  aptly  call  it 
literary  dry  rot.  There  is  no  doubting  the 
Alexandrine  attitude.  While  exalting  Homer 
and  Aeschylus,  as  we  do  Scott  and  Shakes- 
peare, they  assumed  to  command  a  finer  art 
than  those  old  masters  ever  knew.  So  the 
other  day  a  leading  realist  boldly  affirmed  the 
art  of  his  own  contemporary  school  to  be  finer 
than  that  of  Scott,  Thackeray,  and  Dickens. 
There    was    the    smack  of    Callimachus    and 


Literary  Art  41 

Philetas  in  such  a  morsel  of  criticism.  Calli- 
machus,  you  know,  set  himself  up  for  a  critic  of 
Homer,  and,  after  attempting  epic  production 
and  failing,  came  to  the  conclusion  that  it  was 
a  finer  art  than  Homer's  to  write  an  ode  to  a 
woman's  hair.  To-day  the  prevailing  criticism 
seems  to  be  that  to  surpass  Shakespeare  in 
drama,  and  Scott  in  novel-writing,  one  has  but 
to  present  commonplace  life  with  the  clever 
touch  of  conventional  humor. 

We  of  the  Western  world  have  accepted 
realism  and  suited  it  to  an  Abderian  mood  ;  we 
have  laughed  it  into  a  sort  of  popularity  as  a 
fun-bundle,  and  have  made  believe  that  we  can- 
not comprehend  the  difference  between  art  and 
photography  —  between  the  divine  verisimili- 
tude of  a  work  of  genius  and  the  mere  poll- 
parrot  reporting  of  clever  note-takers  in  fiction 
and  poetry.  It  amuses  us  to  be  bored.  In  this 
temper,  content  to  laugh  at  ourselves,  we  are 
making  little  progress  in  serious  art.  So, 
when  the  conscientious  critic  comes  to  look 
facts  in  the  face,  he  is  surprised  at  the  poverty 

6 


42  The  Ethics  of 

of  our  genius  in  composition.  We  have 
sketches,  studies,  bits  of  local  color,  broad 
dashes  of  caricature;  but  very  little  that  fills 
the  measure  of  original  composition  full  and 
finished.  What  appears  to  me  to  be  the  cause 
of  this  is  a  deep-seated  misapprehension  of  our- 
selves as  a  people.  We  are  too  sure  that  it 
would  be  well  for  us  to  be  English,  or  Russian, 
or  French,  instead  of  being  American  ;  but  our 
social  morals  are  not  yet  bad  enough  to  admit 
of  the  alien  treatment,  wherefore  most  of  our 
art  has  a  foreign  subject  or  is  at  least  inter- 
national to  let  in  the  filth. 

Composition_in  art  comprehends  substance 
and  structure.  The  true  artist  designs  no  life- 
less image ;  he  creates  an  organism  informed 
with  the  spirit  of  a  strong  aspiration.  It  is  safe 
to  add  that  every  true  creation  of  genius  is  im- 
mortal, immortally  good  or  immortally  bad  in 
the  broadest  ethical  sense.  As  an  organism  its 
natural  habitat  is  Hell  or  Heaven,  its  influence 
benign  or  malignant.  The  sanest  and  wisest 
among  us  may  fancy  that  to  read  a  romance 


Literary  Art  43 

like  Manon  Lescaut  or  a  novel  like  Madame 
Bovary,  and  discreetly  admire  its  art  is  not  so 
bad ;  but  in  applying  the  high  calculus  of  ethics 
and  passing  to  the  limit  of  moral  responsibility, 
what  difference  appears  between  the  encourage- 
ment of  such  art  and  the  encouragement  of  any 
other  evil  communication  to  the  imagination  of 
mankind  ?  Some  one  says  that  evil  must  go 
into  art.  So  it  must.  It  has  its  important 
place  in  composition.  Immanent  criticism 
makes  us  aware  of  this.  What  Emerson  called 
"the  burden  of  the  Bible  old  "  assigns  it  a  large 
area  and  suggests  its  function  in  every  poem, 
every  drama,  every  romance  based  upon  human 
nature  and  human  experience  or  aspiration. 
Well  does  the  philosopher  of  Concord  remark 
that  belief  in  immortality  would  necessarily 
take  "a  base  form  for  the  savage  and  a  pure 
form  for  the  wise."  The  distinction  is  just  as 
clear  in  art.  A  gross  or  unwise  taste  naturally 
gives  evil  preference  to  good  in  making  an 
article  to  delectate  imagination  withal.  Here  is 
the   secret   and   here   is  the    menace    against 


44  The  Ethics  of 

which  we  cast  ourselves.  To  set  good  and  evil 
over  against  each  other  in  art,  preserving  their 
true  ethical  relations  and  comparing  them  with- 
out prejudice,  is  the  office  of  composition. 
Even  "  art  for  art's  sake,"  of  which  our  eyes  and 
ears  have  long  been  weary,  finds  nothing  in 
imagination  to  justify  weaving  a  lure  whereby 
to  lead  pure  beauty  into  the  mire  of  unholy 
places.  Such  a  sacrifice  is  always  made  on  the 
altar  of  a  sordid  god. 

A  word  here  on  "  sensational "  composition. 
Critics  are  not  very  clear  in  applying  the  ad- 
jective "sensational."  Some  harmless  and 
even  valuable  romance  has  to  bear  that  name, 
while  the  vilest  of  French  intrigue  betinseled 
with  what  is  called  "  realistic  faithfulness  to 
truth  "  meets  with  unqualified  critical  approval. 
Passing  to  the  most  violent  extreme,  let  a  sound 
conscience  decide  between  the  "  dime  dreadful " 
and  Tess  of  the  D  Urbervilles  on  the  score  of 
subtile  and  deep  sensational  energy.  On  your 
honor,  if  compelled  to  decide,  which  would  you 
prefer,  that  your  boy  should  read  Dick  Dead- 


Literary  Art  45 

shot  and  dream  of  being  a  bold  rider  among  the 
cows,  or  that  your  daughter  should  pore  over 
the  temptations  of  Tess  till  every  handsome 
young  man  she  saw  looked  to  her  like  a  leering 
rmti  in  polite  disguise  ?  It  is  composition,  not 
diction  that  makes  a  work  sensational. 

It  is  the  choice  of  figures  and  the  determina- 
tion of  their  attitudes  and  meaning  individually 
and  collectively  that  impresses  the  imagination, 
and  somehow  what  is  named  realistic  fiction 
always  leaves  the  autograph  of  pessimism  on 
the  reader's  heart.  In  the  end  everybody 
comes  to  actual  or  constructive  grief  and  the 
few  who  deserve  well  usually  have  the  worst  of 
the  bargain.  Whether  it  is  a  government,  a 
sermon,  a  machine,  a  poem,  or  a  novel,  composi- 
tion fixes  the  equilibrium  and  so  controls  the 
scope  of  influence.  A  prize-fight  is  a  drama  as 
complete  as  Hamlet  or  Ivanhoe ;  but  in  the 
prize-fight  we  have  only  the  rudimentary  com- 
position of  absolutely  savage  taste.  At  the 
other  extreme  we  have  the  refined,  emasculate 
art  of  Flaubert  and  Guy  de  Maupassant. 


46  The  Ethics  of 

Was  it  Sophocles  who  said  that  Aeschylus 
"  did  right,  all  unaware  of  it  "  ?  It  is  much 
easier  to  reach  the  other  habit  and  do  wrong  by 
mere  momentum  of  acquired  conditions.  This 
is  true  of  nations,  as  of  individuals  ;  and  we 
shall  find  the  composition  of  political  life,  the 
arrangement  and  emphasis  of  its  masses  and 
the  significance  of  its  groups  and  figures  sym- 
pathetically if  not  directly  connected  with  the 
source  of  imaginative  inspiration  and  controlled 
by  the  prevailing  popular  dream.  If  you  will 
observe  the  composition  of  the  French  govern- 
ment under  the  last  Napoleon,  its  likeness  to 
that  of  Flaubert's  and  De  Maupassant's  novels 
will  strike  you  with  startling  force.  Rotten- 
ness of  substance  and  of  meaning — debauchery, 
opium  and  absinthe,  utter  absence  of  con- 
science, pyaemia,  softening  of  the  brain,  suicide 
or  the  mad-house  ;  these  attend  the  composition 
wherein  evil  predominates. 

It  may  seem  to  you  that  I  am  not  saying 
much  about  ethics  as  a  science.  There  is  no 
such    science.     Do   right.      But   where  dwells 


Literary  Art  47 

the  science  of  it  ?  Shall  the  pot  say  to  the 
kettle,  "thou  art  black,"  or  the  diamond  to 
the  dew-drop,  "my  light  is  the  only"?  Be- 
hind diamond  and  dew-drop  is  the  sun,  and 
behind  blackness  is  the  source  of  it.  Neither 
force  to  drive  nor  laws  to  prohibit  can  bring 
about  the  conditions  favored  by  ethics.  The 
fiber,  the  tissue,  nay,  the  very  nerve-fluid  of  the 
social  body,  is  to  be  reached  and  educated  by 
sweet  persuasion  applied  to  that  strange  source 
of  all  human  progress,  the  imagination.  Com- 
pulsion breeds  perverse  stubbornness  ;  prohibi- 
tion develops  unquenchable  desire  for  the 
forbidden  fruit.  This  was  the  springe  in  Eden. 
The  moment  that  man  shall  enact  a  law  of 
ethics,  woe  be  to  the  heretics  !  We  shall  then 
feel  again  how  the  axe,  the  fagot-fire,  and  the 
thumb-screws  can  establish  the  inviolability  of 
a  creed,  the  inerrancy  of  a  text.  We  hear 
much  about  "higher  criticism."  Let  us  have 
it  all  along  the  line  ;  it  may  be  a  "  fad,"  it  may 
be  a  revelation  ;  it  is  death  to  esoteric  bigotry. 
Do  you  imagine  that  truth  will  wither  under 


4  8  The  Ethics  of 

the  directest  and  whitest  ray  of  this  higher 
criticism  ?  Analysis  does  not  affect  ethics  in 
any  way ;  truth  is  a  single  and  simple  sub- 
stance, absolutely  pure  and  indestructible. 

Be  sure  of  one  thing :  the  immanent  power 
of  Christian  civilization  is  freedom  of  investiga- 
gation  and  nothing  which  shrinks  from  the 
severest  test  will  long  appeal  to  credence.  The 
stupendous  composition  called  Greek  mytho- 
logy or  Greek  religion  would  be  a  living  or- 
ganism to-day  had  it  been  true  in  the  first  place. 
The  higher  criticism  dissolved  it  because  it  was 
not  a  truth.  The  grip  of  vitality  is  fastened  in 
the  roots  below  every  possible  reading  and  re- 
vision. The  composition,  the  attitude  of  groups 
and  masses,  the  composite  whole,  invite  belief 
or  disbelief.  We  are  a  Christian  people  because 
the  composition  of  the  Christian  picture  has 
met  our  approval.  The  moment  that  an  arbi- 
trary edict  sets  the  picture  aside  as  specially  ex- 
empt from  critical  tests,  that  moment  a  smile 
and  a  wink  of  doubt  disturb  the  face  of  Chris- 
tendom.    It  looks  too  much  like  a  precaution 


Literary  Art  49 

against  the  dissolution  of  another  mythology. 
The  old  way  of  enforcing  educational  measures 
was  with  a  rod.  Now  we  appeal,  not  by  brute 
force,  but  by  tender  kindness.  Not  so  long  ago 
witches  were  burned  a  few  miles  from  here,  and 
just  over  yonder  the  Protestant  felt  fire  and 
thumb-screw.  To-day  is  the  day  of  open  free- 
dom, and  the  difference  must  be  respected.  But 
education  must  not  in  the  name  of  freedom  as- 
sume license.  The  only  safe  taste  is  that 
grounded  in  the  deepest  meaning  of  our  civiliza- 
tion. To  me  the  word  "heresy"  is  not  a  pleas- 
ing one ;  it  brings  to  my  ears  the  hissing  of 
flames,  to  my  nostrils  the  smell  of  burning 
human  flesh.  I  like  better  the  word  "  educa- 
tion," and  I  delight  in  coupling  it  with  freedom 
and  light.  Search  the  Scriptures  of  all  ages 
and  all  peoples  ;  eternal  life  is  visible  by  eternal 
light.  Shut  off  one  ray  from  the  picture  and 
the  composition  is  blurred. 

The  finest  quality  of  a  composition  is  au- 
thenticity, which  shows  it  steadfast  after  all 
mutations  of  time,  manners,  and  creeds.     Such 

K 


50  The  Ethics  of 

a  composition  is  a  criterion  only  so  long  as  it 
can  resist  the  criticism  of  all  comers ;  its  iner- 
rancy must  meet  and  vanquish  every  new  era's 
suggestion  of  readjustment,  else  suspicion  will 
eat  against  it  like  an  acid.  Not  all  the  critics 
and  grammarians  of  the  Alexandrine  period 
could  dim  one  flower  of  Homer.  What  "  higher 
criticism  "  is  likely  to  shake  the  solid  pillars  of 
the  Bible  ?  With  every  failure  of  the  critic  to 
remove  the  foundations  of  divinely  inspired 
authority,  the  Book  of  Books  takes  deeper  hold 
upon  human  credence  and  shows  the  more  its 
solidity.  So  it  is  with  the  humanly  inspired 
works  of  art.  We  put  them  to  the  test  of 
higher  criticism,  and  if  they  stand  we  know 
that  their  value  is  not  a  moment's  accident  or 
the  result  of  a  mere  factitious  vogue.  It  may 
be  that  some  Callimachus  of  to-day  dreams  that 
Scott's  day  is  over ;  but  the  vitality  of  organic 
composition  keeps  and  will  keep  those  grand 
romances  alive.  The  groups  and  masses  of 
history  are  there  ;  the  significance  of  true  man- 
hood  and   womanhood  is  there ;  the  appeal  of 


Literary  Art  51 

honor  and  courage  is  there,  and  life  is  there 
bearing  itself  heroically.  Everybody  loves  a 
hero. 

The  fascination  of  a  composition  is  always 
romance  ;  good  or  evil  it  is  still  romance.  Your 
sermon,  your  picture,  your  house,  your  novel, 
your  poem,  your  religion,  must  satisfy  the  imagi- 
nation with  romance.  Romance  is  not  a  lie  ;  it 
is  the  surprise  of  the  picturesque.  Call  up 
Adam  and  Eve,  or  Romeo  and  Juliet,  and  there 
is  the  composition  of  romance.  Come  rever- 
ently and  with  unfaltering  credence  to  the  story 
of  Christ's  life  and  death,  and  tell  me  truly,  did 
Aeschylus,  did  Shakespeare  ever  write  so  pictur- 
esque a  tragedy  ?  When  you  tell  that  story  to 
your  child,  it  clutches  his  imagination  and  holds 
it  fast.  The  wonder  of  it  comes  before  any 
deeper  significance  is  comprehended.  Here 
lies  the  secret  of  imaginative  appeal  whether 
the  composition  be  of  life  or  of  fiction.  Beecher, 
Phillips,  Webster,  and  Emerson  knew  it  and 
used  it  in  sermon,  oration,  lecture.  Napoleon 
the  First,  Hugo,  Scott,  Shakespeare,  Plato,  Aes- 


52  The  Ethics  of 

chylus,  Sappho  felt  its  imperious  power.  Begin 
in  the  far  mist  of  antiquity  and  come  down  to 
the  present  with  microscopic  scrutiny,  and  you 
cannot  lay  hand  on  any  great  achievement 
which  had  not  its  hero  and  its  romance. 

You  academic  men  are  fond  of  invoking  the 
"scientific  spirit."  Well,  invoke  it  now.  Col- 
lect the  facts  of  literary  history,  mass  them, 
classify  them,  analyze  them,  and  then  show 
me  one,  just  one  immortal  work  of  fiction, 
drama,  oratory,  or  poetry,  or  religion  which 
has  not  romance  as  its  chief  source  of  ap- 
peal. Throw  in  history  for  good  measure, 
and  still  the  rule  holds.  Heroism,  extraordinary 
events,  the  roll  and  crash  of  war,  great  reforms, 
the  villainies  of  tyrants,  the  divine  patience  of 
saints,  the  influence  of  beautiful  women,  the 
charm  of  poets,  the  building  of  temples,  the  de- 
struction of  cities,  wonderful  discoveries  and  in- 
ventions, revolutions  in  religion  and  philosophy, 
—  take  these  from  history  and  who  will  read 
or  remember  it  ?  Take  any  period  of  our 
country's  life   and  eliminate  the   extraordinary 


Literary  Art  53 

features,  the  pioneers,  the  heroism  of  '76,  the 
mediaeval  romance  of  slavery,  the  great  war, 
Washington,  Lincoln,  Grant,  Lee,  Beecher, 
Whittier,  Stonewall  Jackson,  Ossawattomie 
Brown,  Grover  Cleveland,  the  ocean  telegraph, 
the  stupendous  growth  of  wealth  and  liberal  ed- 
ucation,—  take  out  the  extraordinary  and  you 
have  no  book  to  write  of  us.  Or  if  you  should 
persist  and  write  the  book  it  would  have  no  sig- 
nificance, no  human  appeal.  Take  the  extraor- 
dinary from  science  and  what  is  it  ? 

Do  you  understand  how  Darwin's  theory 
took  hold  of  mankind  ?  Do  you  fancy  that  it 
captivated  a  mere  "scientific"  taste?  Not  that. 
Never  did  human  imagination  find  a  more  won- 
derful romance  than  this  story  of  the  origin  of 
species  and  the  descent  of  man.  Agnostics  like 
to  smile  at  the  simple  Bible  story  of  creation  as 
at  a  nursery  tale.  Well,  the  story  may  not  be 
literally  true,  it  may  not  be  true  at  all ;  but 
this  romance  of  evolution,  is  it  literally  true  ?  Is 
it  true  at  all  ?  Go  ask  the  sphinx  if  its  ancestors 
knew.     Like  a  child  with  a  new  toy,  the  human 


54  The  Ethics  of 

imagination  plays  with  "  natural  selection  "  and 
"the  survival  of  the  fittest,"  and  for  a  little  while 
is  content.  For  awhile  it  is  Darwin  ;  yesterday 
it  was  Humboldt  or  La  Place  ;  the  day  before  it 
was  Pythagoras.  Always  it  is  the  genius  who 
presents  a  great  romantic  composition.  Dar- 
win's theory  may  be  true ;  it  may  be  false  ;  but 
it  is  extraordinary;  it  is  picturesque,  and  it  ap- 
peals to  the  elemental  universal  love  of  the 
wonderful  in  the  human  mind.  When  Leib- 
nitz and  Newton  were  discovering  calculus^ 
imagination  was  on  tip-toe  to  catch  the  first 
glimpse  of  infinity. 

If  you  plan  to  control  men,  you  first  capti- 
vate their  imagination.  Give  me  the  key  to 
a  people's  imagination  and  you  may  have  the 
rest ;  I  will  lead  them  through  nine  crusades 
in  spite  of  you.  Peter  the  Hermit,  John  Law, 
Napoleon,  Pasteur,  old  John  Brown  —  every  man 
who  has  shaken  the  world  did  it  with  the 
lever  of  imagination.  When  lately  the  curtain 
was  wrung  up  and  Doctor  Pasteur  made  his 
bow  we  were  for  a  thrilling  moment  sure  that 


Literary  Art  55 

there  stood  the  master  of  disease  and  death. 
The  light  of  perennial  health  flashed  from  con- 
tinent to  continent.  To-morrow  some  other 
great  romancer  of  science  will  arise.  We  shall 
turn  our  backs  upon  the  epic  of  microbes  and 
hang  Pasteur's  picture  in  the  garret  with  those 
of  Descartes,  La  Place,  and  Buffon.  It  all 
comes  to  one  goal,  which  every  creative  genius 
grazes  with  the  wheel  of  his  chariot. 

Eliminate  from  religion,  any  religion,  its 
specific  romance,  and  you  still  have  left  the 
ancient  generic  wonder  of  it.  Take  this  away 
and  the  residual  composition  will  not  attract  a 
second  glance  from  mankind.  Creeds  are  at 
best  but  persistent,  refractory  wounds  upon  the 
fair  body  of  religion ;  mayhap  some  sweet  day 
they  will  all  coalesce  and  heal  without  a  scar. 
But  deprive  religion  of  its  vital  romance  and  ob- 
serve how  quickly  it  dies.  If  we  can  rid  our 
minds  of  factitious  reverence  and  give  ourselves 
over  to  true  reverence,  we  shall  for  the  first 
time  feel  how  God,  the  universe,  religion,  and 
duty  form  in  the  imagination  a  picture  sphered 


56  The  Ethics  of 

on  the  radius  of  supreme  beauty  and  harmony. 
How  petty  and  trifling  a  religion  becomes  the 
moment  it  disengages  itself,  as  Greek  religion 
at  last  did,  from  that  highest  credulity  which 
alone  amounts  to  absolute  faith,  the  credulity  of 
the  imagination !  What  the  human  soul  longs 
for  is  the  step  beyond,  the  higher  lift,  the  su- 
preme surprise.  Ethics  enters  the  field  to  de- 
mand that  this  step  beyond  shall  not  be  into  the 
pit,  that  this  higher  lift  shall  not  be  to  the 
mountain-top  of  temptation,  that  this  supreme 
surprise  shall  not  come  of  evil  splendor.  It  re- 
quires that  every  scene  of  art  shall  be  so  com- 
posed as  to  have  its  focus  in  a  cleanly  and 
wholesome  truth. 

It  has  been  well  said  that  the  novel  is  to-day 
the  most  popular  form  of  art ;  its  composition 
is  a  matter  of  large  moment  if  it  is  come  to  be 
an  accepted  factor  in  popular  education.  If  it 
is  a  physiological  fact  that  imagination  is  the 
chemistry  of  character,  then  the  impression  of  a 
composition  addressed  directly  to  the  imagina- 
tion may  work  profound  evil  or  great  good  to 


Literary  Art  57 

character.  Bad  as  the  French  people  are  in 
some  directions,  they  go  farther  than  we  do  in 
protecting  young  girls  from  the  danger  of  pro- 
miscuous fiction-reading.  But  I  submit  that  if 
fiction  is  for  education,  it  is  for  the  young,  it 
is  for  the  formative  period  of  life.  To  my  mind 
the  fact  that  a  novel  is  unfit  for  open  reading  at 
the  family  fireside  is  positive  proof  that  it  is  not 
wholesome  reading  for  any  person  at  any  place. 
Let  us  not  lose  sight  of  a  very  important 
distinction.  Art  is  for  delectation  mainly,  for 
moral  teaching  incidentally  or  unawares. 
Various  useful  studies  are  necessarily  unfit  for 
fireside  rehearsal ;  yet  they  must  be  pursued. 
Not  so  with  art ;  it  is  for  the  galleries  of  pure 
culture,  for  the  walls  of  the  churches  and 
schools,  for  the  home  library,  for  the  space 
over  the  library  mantel.  Let  me  say  to  you 
that  certain  assumptions  of  adults  are  known 
by  young  persons  to  be  downright  lies.  For 
instance,  when  the  father  and  mother  of  a 
bright,  inquisitive  family  of  children  assume 
that  Zola  is  delicious  to  old  folk,  bracing  and 

8 


58  The  Ethics  of 

invigorating,  but  deadly  to  the  souls  of  the 
young  !  I  have  seen  a  father  sneak  away  from 
his  sons  to  take  whisky  before  breakfast.  I 
have  seen  a  legislator  blowing  cigarette  smoke 
through  his  own  nose  while  framing  a  law  to 
prohibit  the  sale  of  cigarettes  to  young  men. 
The  prohibition  was  all  right,  but  the  assump- 
tion was  a  lie.  A  vice  is  not  to  be  thus  sup- 
pressed. While  you  sit  at  the  head  of  the 
table  quaffing  Manon  Lescaut  and  Tess  and 
Anna  Karhiina  and  Kreutzer  Sonata,  your 
children  know  what  flavor  it  is  that  you  like. 
You  may  tell  them  that  you  sip  those  tipples 
for  the  good  of  your  mature  soul ;  but  they 
will  know  that  you  are  a  mature  prevaricator. 
The  least  sophisticated  mind  in  all  the  world  is 
not  deceived  when  it  reads  an  immoral  novel 
which  pretends  to  have  a  moral  purpose,  nor 
can  you  hoodwink  even  a  babe  by  pretending 
that  you  read  such  a  novel  with  a  view  to  puri- 
fying your  own  morals. 

It  seems  to  me  that  aesthetics  and  pessimism 
cannot  blend  together ;  therefore  true  art  is  nee- 


Literary  Art  59 

essarily  optimistic.  Even  tragedy  must  offset 
its  catastrophe  with  a  glimpse  of  eternal  justice, 
or  it  must  leave  a  bad  shadow  in  the  mind. 
What  you  read  is  a  personal  experience  to  you. 
If  you  read  pessimism  with  delight,  your  imagi- 
nation makes  you  a  pessimist.  Glance  at  the 
sublime  master-tragedy  of  all  time  and  the  com- 
fort of  the  resurrection  redeems  it  from  pessim- 
ism. Leave  Christ  a  dead  preacher  between 
two  dead  thieves,  and  you  rob  the  tragedy  of  its 
most  precious  human  appeal.  Giotto  stabbed  a 
man  to  death  in  order  to  paint  Christ's  death- 
agony.  Realism  could  go  no  further ;  for  the 
resurrection  does  not  appeal  to  it.  A  composi- 
tion need  not  be  a  sermon  when  it  is  called  a 
poem  or  novel ;  but  it  must  not  meanly  dodge 
being  one.  I  heard  a  man  curse  like  a  pirate  to 
remove  a  suspicion  that  he  was  a  preacher. 
Some  novelists  seem  to  go  far  aside  to  make 
their  stories  unquestionably  devoid  of  every 
evidence  of  moral  responsibility  or  ethical  sig- 
nificance. Others  distort  their  compositions 
with  maudlin  sentimentalities,  thinking  by  this 


60  The  Ethics  of 

means  to  prove  their  loyalty  to  the  sweet 
springs  of  human  kindness.  In  the  conduct  of 
life  neither  these  nor  those  are  of  good  account. 
A  faithful,  authentic  composition  addressed  to 
our  Christian  civilization  should  have  its  masses 
balanced  so  that  the  main  aspirations  of  that 
civilization  are  clearly  acknowledged.  Spon- 
taneous, native  art  never  fails  in  this.  The  un- 
erring Greek  artist  rooted  every  drama,  every 
lyric,  every  dream  of  sculpture  in  the  soil 
where  the  flowers  of  his  religion  grew.  I  do 
not  mean  that  art  must  be  religious ;  I  admit 
that  if  consciously  religious  it  is  likely  to  be 
downright  insipid ;  but  the  immanent  virtue  of 
a  Christian  civilization  ought  not  to  be  absent 
from  its  art. 

I  call  serious  attention  to  the  indissoluble 
connection  between  romance  and  religion,  not 
to  belittle  religion  or  to  make  irreverent  com- 
parison. Pure  romance  demands  faith  in  the 
largest  possibilities ;  religion  exacts  precisely 
the  same ;  and  if  you  will  scrape  off  the  veneer 
of  realism   which  scouts  at   romance,  you   will 


Literary  Art  61 

find  the  substance  of  agnosticism.  If  you  are 
an  agnostic,  you  are  a  realist ;  if  you  are  a  ro- 
mancer, you  have  a  religion.  Religion  appeals 
to  us  for  heroism.  The  oriental  wife  must  burn 
herself ;  the  Mohammedan  must  fast  forty  days ; 
Gautama  must  agonize  seven  times  seven  days 
and  nights  under  the  Bo-tree ;  Christ  must 
forego  the  luxury  of  worldly  triumph  to  die  a 
felon's  death  for  the  good  of  mankind.  But  the 
realists  tell  you  that  heroism  like  Christ's  is  sen- 
sational and  in  very  bad  taste. 

One  dreads  to  appear  polemical  ;  but  how  is 
the  issue  here  presented  to  be  avoided  ?  The 
very  criticism  which  cries,  "Sensational!  sensa- 
tional!" against  harmless  melodrama,  turns  fond 
and  loving  praise  upon  the  Sapho  of  Daudet, 
or  Tess  of  Hardy.  It  seems  that  a  heroic  gen- 
tleman or  lady  is  a  sensational  figure  ;  but  a 
heroic  rout  or  extraordinary  harlot  falls  naturally 
into  the  composition  of  "  high  art !  "  We  are 
warned  by  these  critics  to  avoid  the  unusual  and 
the  extraordinary  ;  but  what  is  the  usual  and  the 
ordinary  ?     Is  it  usual  and  ordinary  for  a  girl  to 


62  The  Ethics  of 

be  like  "Daisy  Miller "  on  one  hand,  and  like 
"  Tess  "  on  the  other  ?  Which  of  these  two  is 
the  ordinary  girl  ?  One  is  the  extreme  of  mil- 
linery flimsiness,  the  other  the  extreme  of  dis- 
honor. One  is  tinseled  vulgarity,  the  other  is 
sainted  debauchery ;  you  pay  your  money  and 
take  your  choice. 

Organized  Christianity,  using  the  phrase  lib- 
erally, ought  to  be  the  source  of  ethics  in  our 
civilization ;  that  is,  it  should  be  able  to  set  the 
pace  of  human  conduct  and  give  direction  to 
culture.  It  should  be  able  to  establish  the  gen- 
eral criterion  by  which  to  measure  art.  If  it 
cannot  do  this  it  must  be  radically  defective  as 
a  model  composition.  If  it  cannot  hold,  mould, 
and  color  human  imagination,  its  end  is  near. 

Here  is  my  scholium,  Immanent  criticism 
is  what  a  civilization  thinks  of  itself.  When- 
ever the  written  or  unwritten  constitution  of 
civilization  loses  its  command  of  absolute  cre- 
dence, it  fails.  To  command  absolute  credence 
it  must  show  itself  absolutely  invulnerable,  at 
least  absolutely  self-respecting.     But  what,  in- 


Literary  Art  63 

deed,  does  a  civilization  think  of  itself,  what  im- 
manent criticism  does  it  secretly,  if  not  openly, 
generate  by  arbitrarily  setting  its  constitution 
above  the  reach  of  free,  honest,  earnest,  inexor- 
able tests  ?  You  lose  self-respect  the  moment 
that  you  claim  special  exemption  from  self-in- 
spection or  from  public  scrutiny. 

But  what  has  all  this  to  do  with  the  ethics 
of  art  ?  Look  back  into  history  and  see.  The 
composition  of  religion  is  the  composition  of 
art.  The  two  are  not  identical ;  but  they  are,  in 
a  pure  state,  mathematically  similar.  The  mo- 
ment that  the  ancient  religion  of  Greece  tot- 
tered, its  art  tottered  correspondingly.  When 
the  Pope  was  infallible  Roman  art  was  infallible. 
Whenever  Christianity  shall  become  homogene- 
ous, when  it  shall  not  call  honest  investigation 
heresy,  when  it  shall  stand  triumphantly  inviting 
all  tests,  extrinsic  and  intrinsic,  we  may  expect  to 
see  it  set  its  ethical  standard  on  the  temple  of  life 
and  the  temple  of  art.  But  the  cord  of  a  creed 
drawn  over-tight  can  strangle  what  it  was 
noosed  to  save. 


64  The  Ethics  of 

Let  me  earnestly  disclaim  any  application  of 
my  remarks  beyond  the  strict  periphery  of  my 
subject.  Let  every  word  go  straight  to  the  re- 
lation of  Christian  ethics  to  the  conduct  of  art. 
Creeds  are  good  or  bad  ;  men  multiply  them  at 
need ;  art  has  nothing  to  do  with  them,  nor  with 
the  quarrels  they  engender ;  but  it  would  seem 
that  the  ancient  well-spring  of  our  Christian 
civilization,  if  pure,  as  I  believe  it  is,  need  fear 
no  analysis  of  its  water.  And  then,  if  the  con- 
duct of  life,  which  is  the  subject  of  Christian 
ethics,  has  the  correlation  with  the  conduct  of 
art  which  I  have  suggested,  it  is  impossible  to 
exaggerate  the  significance  of  recent  movements 
of  Christian  thought  when  we  would  attempt  to 
ascertain  the  effect  upon  both  life  and  art  of  the 
critical  standard  likely  to  be  established.  The 
world  is  moving  ;  it  must  move  or  die.  Move- 
ment is  life ;  stillness  is  death.  Movement  is 
reform  ;  inertia  is  decay.  The  supreme  compo- 
sition of  the  universe  tells  us  of  a  goal  far  be- 
yond our  vision.  We  must  not  struggle  to  pre- 
vent the  waste  of  old  tissues ;  for  it  is  by  such 


Literary  Art  65 

waste  that  we  live  and  grow.  Each  day  we 
must  throw  off  error  once  thought  to  be  truth. 
This  is  the  winnowing  and  selecting  process  of 
progressive  enlightment.  What  is  the  conclu- 
sion ?  It  is  that,  if  ours  is  really  a  Christian 
civilization,  the  controlling  spirit  of  Christianity 
ought  to  appear  in  its  art  composition  ;  that  the 
immanent  criticism  generated  by  Christianity 
must  in  the  long  run  shape  the  history  of  our 
civilization,  and  in  the  long  run  Christianity 
must  bear  the  blame  of  our  failure  or  the  praise 
of  our  triumph. 

The  Greeks  had  a  word  which  perfectly  ex- 
pressed style,  the  word  ^^0?,  which  I  would 
translate  by  the  phrase  "smile  of  meaning." 
The  rjOr)  were  the  character-beams  of  a  coun- 
tenance, as  if  the  soul  looked  out  with  a  twinkle 
of  its  own.  They  had  another  golden  word, 
Odkepov,  the  bloom  of  vigor.  If  we  could  blend 
the  two  words  into  one,  it  would  give  what  I 
want.  Individuality,  luminosity,  sincerity,  and 
rosy  health  must  characterize  the  expression  of 


66  The  Ethics  of 

sound  art.  Physicians  say  that  our  diseases 
register  themselves  in  our  faces ;  a  disease  of 
culture  comes  out  in  the  lineaments  of  civiliza- 
tion. A  sick  man  is  whimsical ;  sick  society 
indulges  in  '  fads  ; '  to-day  it  cries  for  Tolstoi, 
to-morrow  it  whines  for  Ibsen. 

A  perfectly  healthy  civilization  is  a  happy 
organism  content  with  its  natural  bill  of  fare  ; 
and  it  remains  healthy  just  so  long  as  it  holds  to 
the  soil  of  nativity  and  dreams  not  of  alien  man- 
ners. Such  a  civilization  was  the  Greek ;  not 
merely  conservative,  but  true  to  itself  and  sin- 
cerely homogeneous.  Its  religion  turned  out  to 
be  false,  as  any  religion  possibly  may ;  still 
Greek  sincerity  and  loyalty  in  religion  was  the 
standard  of  a  perfect  art.  The  Greek  poet  was 
a  healthy  animal,  well-fed  and  well-groomed.  In 
the  light  of  his  time  he  was  good.  He  was  a 
consistent  and  sincere  heathen  glad  to  be  alive  ; 
his  song  was  the  perfect  exponent  of  his  nature. 
This  reaching  down  to  the  original  elements  of 
character  for  the  terms  of  expression  justifies 
Buffon's  definition,  le  style  est  Vhomme  mime. 


Literary  Art  67 

Style,  when  sincere,  is  civilization  itself,  and 
properly  speaking  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as 
insincere  style.  What  we  are  apt  to  call  style, 
in  the  literature  of  to-day,  stands  for  nothing, 
being  a  mere  whiff  of  evanescence  puffed  from 
the  lips  of  conventional  humor  or  stereotyped 
smartness  ;  it  is  not  the  spontaneous  exhalation 
of  elemental  significance.  It  is  interesting  to 
observe  how  the  self-styled  realists  go  about 
trying  to  draw  style  out  by  connecting  them- 
selves with  vulgarity,  evidently  mistaking  it  for 
simplicity.  A  vulgar  spirit  may  be  simple  ; 
oftenest  it  is  not ;  true  simplicity  has  a  refining 
power  which  eludes  academical  control.  Your 
simple  man  is  clean,  and  he  seems  not  to  know 
it ;  or  at  least  makes  no  distinction  of  it.  Your 
vulgar  man,  if  not  rank,  has  faith  in  the  efficacy 
of  low  means.  An  old  mountaineer  doctor  was 
called  by  a  city  woman  touring  in  the  hills  to 
see  her  child,  who  was  ill.  "  Madam,"  he  said, 
"  let  yer  little  gal  run  out  doors  an'  git  some 
dirt.  Gross  personal  cleanliness  air  very  on- 
healthy."     He  was  a  critic  laying  down  a  maxim 


68  The  Ethics  of 

of  realism.  Another  saying  of  his  was  :  "  A 
leetle  bit  o'  clean  dirt  air  not  nasty."  In  other 
words  a  certain  amount  of  filth  is  supposed  to 
be  necessary  to  vigorous  life.  I  think  that  this 
notion  as  applied  to  literary  art  comes  of  a  sup- 
erficial reading  of  Chaucer,  Shakespeare, 
Horace,  Homer,  and  other  old  masters,  and  of 
mistaking  their  smut  for  their  style. 

It  is  past  the  time  when  a  man  can  live  like 
Diogenes  or  sing  like  Anakreon.  A  tub  is  no 
longer  habitable,  and  our  wine  gives  headache 
instead  of  joy.  We  should  feel  like  very  be- 
nighted children  if  we  shaped  our  destiny  by 
the  direction  of  the  Sybilline  Books.  It  is  the 
difference  of  civilizations  that  sets  up  the  bar  — 
it  is  the  failure  to  take  this  difference  into  ac- 
count that  brings  the  realist  to  grief  with  his 
boasted  sincerity.  These  realists  forget,  or 
mayhap  never  knew,  that  what  superficially  ap- 
pears to  be  the  most  daring  realism  in  Greek 
art  was  indeed  the  romantic  flower  of  their  re- 
ligion and  not  a  "society  report  "  or  a  transcript 
of  observation.     What  manner  of  impression  of 


Literary  Art  69 

our  era,  its  stupendous  forces  and  its  almost 
unimaginable  significance  will  the  far-off  future 
man  draw  from  reading  one  of  Henry  James's 
novels  or  one  of  Walt  Whitman's  poems  ?  I  do 
not  speak  of  these  two  men  as  imitators ;  they 
are  not  that.  What  I  do  mean  is  that  they  do 
not  see  or  express  any  of  the  deep  character- 
lines  of  our  civilization  as  a  whole.  What  they 
grasp  is  exotic  and  superficial ;  each  has  im- 
ported his  art-spirit,  one  from  modern,  artificial 
Europe,  the  other  from  ancient  Egypt.  One  is 
infinitely  crude,  the  other  infinitessimally  fine ; 
neither  expresses  anything  deeply  characteristic 
of  our  civilization.  Indeed,  whenever  we  try  to 
fit  old  life  to  a  new  body  we  always  somehow 
get  nothing  but  the  dregs.  Imitation  invariably 
means  the  imitation  of  faults.  It  is  said  that  in 
counterfeit  money  the  simplest  and  clearest 
lines  of  engraving  are  most  often  badly  exe- 
cuted. The  same  is  true  in  counterfeit  litera- 
ture ;  we  detect  its  spuriousness  in  the  failure 
to  reproduce  authentic  strokes. 

To  give  composition  the  rjOos,  the  counten- 


70  The  Ethics  of 

ance  of  character,  and  the  OaXepov,  the  clean, 
fair  bloom  of  vigor,  is  the  highest  function  of 
artistic  expression.  Those  writers  who  have 
most  signally  failed  in  expression  have  been 
clearly  wanting  in  this  magnetism  of  literary 
countenance.  Walt  Whitman  pleases  one  reader 
and  repels  ten  thousand.  Not  so  with  Newman, 
or  Tennyson,  or  Robert  Louis  Stevenson,  or 
Nathaniel  Hawthorne,  or  Lowell,  or  Howells. 
These  have  the  eye  of  the  Ancient  Mariner  to 
hold  ten  thousand,  to  repel  none.  With  this 
particular  fascination  the  writer's  subject-mat- 
ter has  nothing  to  do.  He  will  detain  you  an 
hour  on  your  way  to  dinner  with  the  analysis  of 
a  vague  smile  just  as  easily  as  with  an  epic. 
There  are  two  extremes  of  artificial  sin- 
cerity. Walt  Whitman  stands  at  one,  the 
"  goody-goody "  school  at  the  other.  You 
know  at  a  glance  that  Walt  Whitman's  sin- 
cerity is  a  matter  of  his  own  manufacture  ;  it  is 
an  assumption  that  has  grown  into  his  tissues 
and  become  indurated.  So  of  the  Sunday- 
school  story-writer.     We  all  know  that  this  his- 


Literary  Art  71 

tory  of  the  good  little  girl  who  came  to  be  so 
sentimentally  religious  that  she  melted  away 
into  a  sort  of  pathetic  treacle  for  angel-bread  is 
out  of  the  bounds  of  all  honesty.  It  is  the 
worst  of  all  sensational  trickery.  I  count  it  the 
meanest  of  pessimism  to  make  a  child  believe 
that  the  road  to  Heaven  is  always  out  of  repair 
and  its  bridges  broken. 

Plato  taught  that  pleasure  is  the  return  to 
nature ;  but  the  admirers  of  Walt  Whitman  ac- 
cept no  return  to  nature  save  that  which  brings 
up  at  brutal  coarseness  or  even  obscenity. 
Ethics  demands  a  return  to  the  divine  purity, 
candor,  and  jocund  optimism  of  nature.  For 
without  trust  in  the  good  of  nature  there  is  no 
ethics.  If,  as  the  realists  represent,  life  is  a 
failure  and  all  of  its  stories  come  out  wrong, 
how  can  conduct  avail  ?  You  know  that  realists 
consider  it  maudlin  art  to  have  a  novel  end  hap- 
pily. When  I  hear  a  singularly  emasculate  lit- 
erary voice  prating  about  "inexorable  art"  and 
"merciless  truth"  I  know  that  there's  another 
disagreeable  novel  coming.     Singularly  enough, 


72  The  Ethics  of 

but  naturally,  too,  by  the  way,  pessimism  of  con- 
ception and  of  composition  has  enforced  ultra- 
refinement  of  literary  artisanship ;  for  human 
nature  must  have  beauty,  if  not  of  substance, 
then  of  surface.  What  realism,  so-called,  lacks 
in  intrinsic  interest  is  hoped  to  be  compensated 
for  by  extrinsic  cleverness.  Mr.  Howells  must 
have  meant  this  when  he  said  that  in  our  day 
literary  art  is  finer  than  it  was  in  the  day  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott.  He  meant  a  finer  verbal  artisan- 
ship  ;  for  who  could  believe  that  Daisy  Miller 
is  a  greater  novel  than  Ivanhoe  ?  The  dis- 
tinction to  be  drawn  is  between  contents  and 
superficies.  We  galvanize  more  cleverly  than 
Scott  did  ;  but  do  we  equal  the  body  of  his  art  ? 
I  have  said  that  true  expression  is  from 
within,  the  exhalation  or  irradiation  of  meaning 
and  influence,  the  tjOos  and  the  OaXepov  of  art. 
No  superficial  dressing  can  give  it ;  for  it  is  not 
like  the  sheen  of  varnish  ;  it  beams  out  from  the 
sphere's  center  and  makes  every  substance  a 
fire-hearted  crystal.  No  amount  of  word-study 
or  of   phrase-practice  can  compass  style.     Die- 


rary  Art  73 


tion  may  be  perfected  so  that  correct  and  flexi- 
ble language  becomes  habitual ;  but  the  mag- 
netism of  expression  is  not  to  be  drawn  from 
grammar,  or  rhetoric,  or  dictionary.  Here 
again  comes  in  that  subtile  chemistry  of  char- 
acter —  imagination.  There  must  be  a  clearly 
assignable  difference  between  a  pure  and  fine 
academical  diction,  and  what  we  would  mean  by 
the  phrase  "  a  fascinating  style."  Something 
like  far  and  fair  perspectives  glimpsed  between 
words  gives  the  sweet,  strong  sense  of  surprise, 
the  precious  shock  of  discovery,  the  unexpected 
return  to  nature. 

Style  is  not  literary,  not  bookish,  not  lubri- 
cated with  lamp-oil  and  garnished  with  quota- 
tions and  references,  nor  spiked  with  mere  nov- 
elties. You  find  it  as  you  find  youth  and  beauty 
and  rare  charm  of  soul,  quite  free  of  debt  to  any 
loan-office  and  standing  upon  no  patent  of  con- 
ventional nobility.  It  is  by  a  writer's  style  that 
we  get  into  his  soul  and  breathe  his  moral  at- 
mosphere. Here  the  refined  essence  of  his  na- 
ture floats  free,  and  here  is  distilled  the  dew  of 


74  The  Ethics  of 

his  character.  So  the  highest  personal  compli- 
ment we  can  pay  an  author  is  to  tell  him  that  he 
has  rare  charm  of  style.  But  what  if  he  uses  this 
charm  in  the  bazars  of  art  to  make  poison-pro- 
ducts look  wholsesome  ?  All  along  as  we  plow 
our  furrow  of  inquiry  we  turn  up  this  stubborn 
bulb  of  responsibility.  To  the  average  tongue 
it  has  an  acrid  taste,  but  we  must  bite  it  every 
day  and  every  hour  of  our  toil,  whether  we 
relish  it  or  not.  Is  it  worth  while  to  try  to 
imagine  that  in  art  there  is  a  domain  where  the 
love  of  evil  brings  no  sense  of  ethical  disturb- 
ance ?  The  ill-starred  men  of  genius  have  been 
those  who  attempted  revolt  and  tried  to  smother 
the  still,  small  voice  in  a  wet  blanket  which  they 
called  freedom.  The  Villons,  the  Baudelaires, 
the  Byrons,  the  Rousseaus,  the  Shelleys,  the  De 
Maupassants,  all  these,  say  what  we  may,  looked 
at  good  with  a  sinister  eye  of  intense  selfishness 
and  hate  ;  but  they  each  gnawed  a  file.  These 
anarchists  in  art  are  also  antinomians  in  morals. 
Not  one  of  them  ever  drew  a  clean  breath  or 
ever  honored  wedlock,  wifehood,  motherhood,  or 


Literary  Art  75 

womanhood,  or  virtue.  They  prated,  with  the 
thrilling  power  of  genius,  about  freedom  and 
conscience  ;  but  what  did  they  mean  ?  The  up- 
shot of  it  all  was  they  desired  license.  Villon 
desired  to  steal,  Shelley  wished  to  put  away 
his  wife  and  get  another,  Byron  longed  to  be  a 
libertine  and  yet  be  a  hero.  Now,  at  least  two 
or  three  of  these  had  great  genius  ;  Shelley  and 
Villon  especially  set  a  lasting  fascination  in 
their  works,  and  although  Byron  does  not  wear 
so  well,  he  compels  a  slowly  relaxing  attention 
as  he  retreats  in  the  romantic  distance.  Rous- 
seau's five  children  are  still  crying  in  the  found- 
ling hospital  and  wondering  what  is  the  matter 
with  the  "  Social  Contract." 

I  am  not  appealing  to  the  argumentum  ad 
hominem  ;  I  am  suggesting  the  rjOos,  the  char- 
acter-glow of  these  exponents  of  revolt  against 
the  inevitable  good  and  of  apology  for  the  im- 
mitigable bad.  From  the  heart's  fullness  the 
mouth  speaketh.  Here  is  anarchic  liberty 
urged  and  merged  into  hideous  personal  license, 
and  all  so  alluringly  expressed  that  any  restraint 


76  The  Ethics  of 

seems  a  tyranny.  But  it  would  be  safe  to  say 
that  immanent  criticism  has  settled  the  ethical 
point  in  the  light  of  our  civilization.  Rousseau 
made  a  revolution,  and  yet  his  books  have  not 
kept  their  hold  like  those  of  Scott.  Sound- 
hearted  and  true-souled  Sir  Walter  speaks  a 
language  informed  with  robust  health  and  fra- 
grant of  moral  purity  and  sanity.  We  feel  with- 
out going  into  biography  that  he  has  never  de- 
serted a  wife  or  his  children,  or  tried  to  upset 
the  laws  of  marriage.  He  seems  large,  strong, 
safe,  steadfast ;  and  we  like  to  have  him  near 
us.  An  influence  like  his  never  leaves  a  morbid 
heat  in  the  nerve-centers,  never  suggests  that 
hell  has  some  advantages  over  Heaven  as  a  high- 
toned  summer  resort.  After  reading  Ivanhoe 
you  may  indulge  some  romantic  desire  for  a 
spear,  a  shield,  an  armored  horse,  and  plenty  of 
muscle  ;  but  you  breathe  good  air  and  feel  clean. 
Not  so  at  the  end  of  a  novel  by  Zola.  As 
was  said  by  a  reader  of  Balzac,  the  first  impulse 
after  laying  aside  one  of  his  books  is  to  wash 
one's  hands  and  brush  one's  coat.     The  atmos- 


Literary  Art  77 

phere  is  swarming  with  evil  germs.  The  ob- 
jection has  been  made  to  Scott  that  his  stories 
seem  unreal.  This  is  scarcely  just.  History 
as  well  as  romance  speaks  in  those  novels  with 
what  Sir  Walter  himself  called  the  "  big  bow- 
bow,"  and  their  weight  of  truth  will  withstand 
yet  a  long  while  the  puffs  of  "  scientific  "  criti- 
cism aimed  at  their  "  artless  loquacity  "  of  style. 
The  lasting  underglow  of  his  works  is  their 
sturdy  spirit  of  elemental  honesty  and  sympa- 
thy with  the  right. 

It  may  be  unfashionable  to  express  art  in  the 
simple  terms  of  moral  responsibility  —  the  taste 
of  our  moment  may  not  relish  honesty ;  but  be- 
hind the  taste  lies  disease.  Certainly  if  we 
need  filth  to  feed  upon  we  are  in  a  bad  way. 
Here  comes  forth  the  significance  of  expression  ; 
for  in  art  as  in  a  face  the  countenance  is  the 
outer  manifestation  of  inner  value.  What  the 
Greeks  named  Karoxn,  the  enthusiasm  of  in- 
spiration, may  be  of  good  or  of  evil ;  but  we  have 
a  way  to  distinguish.  No  paint  and  powder 
of  mere  artifice  can   make  the  sweet  glow  of 


78  The  Ethics  of 

health  on  cheek  and  lip.  Instinctively  we  know 
through  some  fine  ray  of  expression  the  pure  (^ 
from  the  spurious  ;  and  every  thrill  of  fascina- 
tion tells  us  where  its  wellspring  is,  and 
whether  it  is  good  or  bad.  Beauty  is  of  ethical 
importance ;  even  mere  beauty  of  raiment.  Let 
whatever  is  clothed  be  adorned,  not  decorated. 
A  sense  of  being  well  dressed  is  not  the  same 
as  a  consciousness  of  wearing  foppish  finery. 
A  book,  an  oration,  a  poem,  a  sermon,  is  but  the 
measure  of  a  man,  and  it  betrays  good  or  bad 
taste  in  the  same  way  that  a  man  does. 

We  think  aside  that  it  is  no  strong  sign  of 
greatness  for  a  man  to  be  troubled  about  the 
fashion-plates  in  the  tailor's  window ;  and  I  ven- 
ture to  remark  that  no  very  great  book  wears 
clothes  of  the  extreme  current  style.  Paris  sets 
the  pace  for  light  people  ;  but  no  genuine  genius 
can  be  led  by  the  nose  ;  he  likes  a  way  of  his 
own.  So  it  appears  that  expression  is  indeed, 
while  nominally  (or  rather  conventionally)  super- 
ficial, the  radical  characteristic,  the  innermost 
meaning    outwardly    manifest    of   organic   art. 


Literary  Art  79 

There  is  in  the  word  rjOos  a  lingering  trace  of 
the  earlier  definition  —  the  lair  of  a  wild  thing  — 
the  gleam  of  eyes  in  the  gloom  of  a  cave,  the  in- 
dependence absolute  and  resolute  of  nature  lying 
on  a  primitive  bed,  the  ari/3d<;  of  the  old  poets. 
The  soul  of  man,  in  other  words,  glares  out  or 
smiles  out  through  his  style,  and  expression  re- 
lates to  the  conduct  of  life  just  as  the  fluidity  of 
matter  relates  to  movement ;  for  culture  does 
not  change  substance,  but  renders  it  plastic, 
malleable,  ductile.  Etherealized  in  the  empy- 
rean we  have  no  giddiness  in  whirling  with  the 
stars  ;  annealed  in  the  heat  of  hell  we  play  with 
fire  and  feel  no  shriveling  of  conscience.  It  is 
easy  enough  to  see  when  a  man  is  dipping  his 
pen  into  his  ink-pot  of  culture  instead  of  into 
the  veins  of  his  being ;  the  outcome  is  the  dif- 
ference between  impression  and  expression. 
The  pseudo-realists,  like  Mr.  James,  and  the 
genuine  realists,  like  Paul  Bourget,  are  confess- 
edly mere  reporters ;  consequently,  no  matter 
how  analytical  in  manner,  they  are  in  fact  but 
superficial   impressionists.     They  pour  no  wine 


80  The  Ethics  of 

of  life  from  within  —  they  express  no  sap  of 
originality.  What  Jane  Austen  was  in  her  day 
Mr.  James  and  his  "school  "  are  to  our  day — a 
cleverly  trained  and  finely  modulated  voice  of 
current  social  gossip.  No  amount  of  analytical 
refinement  can  give  to  this  voice  the  holding 
and  haunting  power.  So  with  the  true  realist, 
Paul  Bourget,  who  to-day  stands  in  the  old  shoes 
of  the  Abbe  Prevost ;  his  novels  have  only  the 
strong  fascination  of  evil,  the  eye  of  the  deadly 
serpent.  Are  these  novels  medicine  for  sick 
souls  or  confections  for  well  ones  ? 

Let  us  see-saw  this  alternative.  Art  is  for 
reform  or  it  is  for  delectation ;  there  is  no  Mid- 
way Plaisance.  But  how  shall  the  mere  realistic 
reproduction  of  the  social  evil,  as  in  a  mirror, 
work  reform  to  the  great  mass  of  honest  society  ? 
Or  how  can  it  legitimately  delectate  a  pure  mind 
or  a  mind  preferring  purity  ?  Such  art  is  either 
a  fool's  folly  or  a  pander's  lure.  It  is  either 
filth  for  the  good,  or  vice  for  the  vicious.  The 
subtlest  quality  of  expression  exerts  a  sort  of 
electrical  influence  for  good  or  for  bad.     As  a 


Literary  Art  81 

battery  current  flowing  through  certain  metals 
disintegrates  or  molecularly  reforms  their  sub- 
stance, so  the  thrill  of  art,  for  weal  or  ill,  changes 
the  crystals  of  the  imagination  and  shocks  char- 
acter into  conformity  with  the  noble  aspiration 
or  the  groveling  passion  it   arouses  and  feeds. 
We   might   take   stock  of   history  and  find  its 
larger  statistics  intensely  significant  in  this  con- 
nection.    A   loose   or    reckless   moral   temper 
shows  in  epochs  as  clearly  as  in  persons.     The 
style,  the  17 #o?,  of  a  period  as  it  gleams  from  the 
record  gives  the  golden  key  of  that  civilization. 
I  read  a  man  as  I  read  geology,  by  the  strata 
he  has  built  and  the  organic  forms  they  inclose. 
If  he  has  believed  on  evil  he  has  deposited  pes- 
simism.    Despite   every  condition,  it   is  out  of 
his  central  absolute  self-core  that  man  delivers 
his    message ;  no    other    order    of    expression 
amounts    to    authentic    communication.      The 
ethical  concern  is  to  warm  and  purify  the  self- 
core.     It  is  the  mission  of  Christian  civilization 
to  make  the  source  of  expression  pure,  so  that 
the  face  of  life  shall  have  an  honest  and  hopeful 
countenance. 


82  The  Ethics  of 

I  am  mindful  of  the  limitations  I  must 
observe;  but  I  will  risk  suggesting  the  uni- 
versal application  of  what  I  have  but  inti- 
mated. In  our  republic  we  have  but  one  final 
absolute  vehicle  of  political  expression  —  the 
ballot.  Through  it  life  and  all  that  life  can 
compass  are  controlled ;  but  if  the  ballot  is  a 
mere  commodity  on  the  stalls  for  sale  what  be- 
comes of  life  ?  Our  Senators  speak  for  our 
States ;  but  if  Senators  buy  their  seats  or  sell 
their  official  influence,  what  is  the  measure  of 
political  expression  ?  Our  preachers  stand  as 
mouth-pieces  of  Christianity  ;  but  if  they  find 
their  field  only  where  salary  is  largest,  what  is 
the  true  exponent  of  their  purpose  ?  And  now 
I  offer  either  horn  of  the  dilemma,  —  let  art  be 
for  education,  or  let  it  be  for  comfort  or  delecta- 
tion ;  in  either  case  to  be  safe  it  must  be  sound 
and  sweet  in  substance  and  in  essence.  But 
where  does  it  sink  to  when  it  assumes  the  posi- 
tion and  condition  of  mere  unconscionable  com- 
mercial manufacture  ?  At  this  point  the  artist 
stands  ready  to  meet  any  mood  of  public  de- 
bauchery with  the  tipple  it  affects. 


Literary  Art  83 

I  thoroughly  sympathize  with  the  scientific 
spirit  in  the  true  field  of  science  ;  but  I  cannot 
conceive  of  any  kinship  between  the  mood  of 
science  and  the  mood  of  art.  So  soon  as  art  is 
set  to  academic  rule  it  becomes  mere  artisanship. 
Baudelaire  proposed  to  teach  the  art  of  poetry 
just  as  we  teach  mathematics  ;  but  no  pupil  of 
his  ever  wrote  true  poetry.  The  only  way  to  con- 
trol art  or  religion  or  political  impulse  is  to  edu- 
cate the  taste  of  the  world,  for  the  genius  is  all 
men  in  one  ;  in  almost  every  instance  he  comes 
out  of  the  average  class,  that  middle  stratum 
into  which  rises  the  rank  sap  of  low  life  and 
upon  which  settles  the  richest  sediments  of  all 
the  higher  currents.  We  speak  of  mud-sills. 
Well,  if  the  mud-sills  are  sound,  the  building  has 
a  good  base.  Moral  education  is  needed  on  the 
ground,  among  the  classes  whence  genius  rises. 
Let  the  imagination  of  the  masses  be  trained  in 
pure  channels  and  taste  will  take  care  of  itself. 
Almost  every  person  reads  now  with  a  grow- 
ing appetite  for  the  flavor  of  art.  Shall  the 
rudimentary    lesson    of     literature    for     these 


84  The  Ethics  of 

awakening  millions  be  a  discouraging  and 
debauching  pessimism  ?  Decadence  lies  that 
way.  Not  mere  literary  decadence  alone ;  but 
the  breaking  up  of  the  heroic  tissues  of 
manhood. 

I  cannot  accept  art  as  the  dream  of  irre- 
sponsibility, nor  yet  as  the  mere  photography 
of  visible  nature.  It  must  enlarge  vision  and 
glorify  prospects,  not  in  the  fairy-tale  mood, 
but  in  the  mood  of  faith  in  God  and  in  man- 
kind. It  is  not  time  to  discard  heroism  ;  what  we 
need  is  the  higher  heroism  and  more  heroism. 
The  poet  and  the  novelist  may  well  dream 
of,  nay,  awake  to  examine,  a  more  exalted 
chivalry  than  the  templars  knew,  a  higher 
regard  for  woman,  for  wifehood,  motherhood, 
manhood,  brotherhood,  fatherhood.  In  Paris  a 
pure  girl  dare  not  venture  in  broad  daylight 
alone  in  the  best  street.  There  too  is  where  a 
novel  or  a  poem  nearly  always  keys  itself  in 
illicit  love.  Glance  at  the  face  of  Parisian 
fiction,  and  you  see  the  countenance  of  a 
courtesan.     The    gleam    of    evil    comes    from 


Literary  Art  85 

within.  Its  expression  suggests  that  no  woman 
is  pure,  no  man  honorable,  no  home  free  of  the 
scarlet  stain.  Realism  has  found  this  sort  of 
thing  fascinating  and  is  beginning  to  import  it 
into  our  fiction  and  poetry  for  the  healing  it 
brings  to  diseased  souls  !  We  may  treat  lightly 
the  fact  that  cheap  editions  of  these  novels  are 
devoured  by  our  shop-girls,  our  factory-girls,  our 
poor  women  everywhere  hungry  for  something 
to  amuse  the  imagination  withal ;  we  may  avoid 
the  truth  while  evading  observation ;  but  yet 
we  know  what  is  coming  to  future  generations 
when  our  college  boys  gorge  their  minds  with 
De  Maupassant  and  Zola  and  Bourget  and  Hardy 
and  Flaubert,  recommended  to  them,  alas,  by 
the  leading  critics !  I  do  not  care  to  draw 
pictures,  nor  would  I  appeal  by  means  of  mere 
emphasis  of  apprehension.  It  is  one  thing  to  ** 
recognize  genius  and  it  is  quite  another  thing 
to  accept  and  assimilate  the  evil  that  genius 
does.  Flaubert  was  unquestionably  a  great 
genius ;  but  the  sort  of  novels  he  wrote  cannot 
but  carry  an  evil  influence  into  any  mind. 


86  The  Ethics  of 

Here  then  is  the  ethical  connection :  what 
we  express  by  art  is  the  loosing  of  a  fascina- 
tion which  takes  hold  upon  the  innermost 
sources  of  life  to  color  conduct  through  a  hun- 
dred hidden  veins.  In  the  countenance  of  a 
fiction  or  a  poem  we  find  the  magnetism  of 
good  or  evil  out  of  a  genius  able  to  master 
our  imagination  and  set  us  forth  upon  a  new 
way.  Rare  Ben  Jonson  touched  the  key-note 
of  ethics  when  he  said  of  the  poet,  "We  do 
not  require  of  him  mere  elocution,  or  an  ex- 
cellent faculty  in  verse,  but  the  exact  knowledge 
of  all  virtues  and  their  contraries,  with  ability 
to  render  one  loved,  the  other  hated,  by  his 
proper  embattling  them."  Again  he  sounds  it 
when  he  remarks,  "Language  most  shows  a 
man :  speak,  that  I  may  see  thee.  .  .  No 
glass  renders  a  man's  form  or  likeness  so  true 
as  his  speech."  He  says  that  speech  is 
"likened  to  a  man,"  and  that  a  "good  man  al- 
ways profits  by  his  endeavor.  .  .  So  good 
authors  in  their  style."  It  was  Matthew  Arnold, 
a  cunning  stylist,  and  in  the  main  a  safe  critic, 


Literary  Art  87 

who  observed  closely,  that  said  of  the  best  Eng- 
lish style,  it  is  "magical,"  contradistinguishing 
it  from  the  Greek  style.  I  find  true  style  every- 
where magical,  and  it  seems  to  me  that  the  use 
of  this  magic  does  not  fall  outside  the  bound  of 
ethics  ;  that  it  is  a  part  of  the  conduct  of  life 
so  to  direct  its  use  that  it  shall  not  become 
black  magic. 

Our  scientists  are  turning  their  search-lights 
upon  hypnotism  or  the  alleged  mysterious  power 
of  personal  physical  magnetism.  In  the  expres- 
sion of  genius  lurks  a  force,  almost  irresistible 
and  yet  more  occult  than  mesmerism,  which 
may  work  for  ill  or  for  good.  But  I  will  discard 
genius  and  take  the  case  of  the  average  literary 
artificer,  the  successful  novelist  who  makes  his 
bread  out  of  his  ink-horn.  In  no  small  degree 
the  literary  artist  is  a  sorcerer  ;  he  takes  posses- 
sion of  his  reader  by  a  force  proportionate  to 
style.  An  evil  subject  may  have  in  itself  a  fas- 
cination, but  style  will  make  it  irresistible.  So 
of  a  good  subject.  "Virtues  and  their  contra- 
ries" are  handled  by  this  magic  and  exhibited  for 


88  The  Ethics  of 

our  good  or  our  harm  with  all  the  power  of  verisi- 
militude ;  and  the  result  is  the  same,  whether  art 
is  for  education  or  for  mere  amusement.  Here 
again  we  are  cast  back  upon  the  largest  consid- 
eration of  life,  that  conduct  is  a  seed  to-day,  a 
fruit  to-morrow,  and  that  what  is  sown  in  art 
produces  the  food  for  the  thousands  whose  only 
share  in  aesthetic  economy  is  to  eat,  assimilate, 
and  grow.  The  banquet  may  be  for  pleasure 
only ;  but  the  result  is  drunkenness  or  healthful 
alimentation,  a  headache  or  a  pleasant  memory. 
It  was  the  burden  of  heathen  song  that  our  indi- 
vidual span  of  life  is  all.  The  merry  Greek  saw 
nothing  in  the  long  run,  thought  not  of 
mankind,  but  only  of  himself  and  the  space  be- 
tween him  and  the  grave.  Our  era  came  in 
with  a  teaching  which  awoke  a  sense  of  one 
generation's  responsibility  for  strains  running 
through  all  succeeding  generations.  We  can- 
not escape,  try  as  we  may,  the  tension  of  the 
endless  chain,  of  which  each  of  us  is  an  im- 
perishable link. 


Literary  Art  89 

Speaking  my  own  mind,  art  seems  to  me 
both  for  education  and  for  rational  delectation, 
and  the  expression  of  it  demands  highest  regard 
for  the  outcome.  We  are  but  children,  and 
whether  in  schoolroom  or  play-ground,  what  we 
take  in  becomes  a  part  of  us  and  shines  or 
scowls  for  evermore  in  the  countenance  of  char- 
acter, to  rj6o<$  /cal  to  avOos,  the  flash  from  within 
and  the  bloom  of  desire. 


Books  and  Pamphlets  for  the  Times. 

Open-Air  Preaching.    By  Rev.  E.  H.  Bying- 

ton.    104  pp.,  illustrated. 
Introductory  Hebrew  Grammar.    By  Prof. 

E.  C.  Bissell,  D.D.    2d  ed.     141  pp. 
Hebrew  Exercises  for   Classes.     By  Prof. 

James  Robertson,  D.D.    38  pp. 
Vocabulary    of    New    Testament    Words. 

By  O.  S.  Davis.    32  pp. 
The   Brookfield   Services.  Five  Series. 

26  Services.    (Over  700,000  sold.) 
The  Hartford  Seminary  Record.  Bi-monthly 

Magazine.    Vol.  IV.    1893-94 
Handy  Harmony  of  the  Gospels.     By  Prof. 

A.  T.  Perry.    16  pp. 
Numerous     Theological     Pamphlets.      By 

various  authors. 

For  circulars  and  price-list,  address  — 
1bartfor&  Seminars  firess 

HARTFORD,  CONN. 


LOAN  DEPT 

*»>"  book  is  due  '  * 


or 


Due  end  of  FALL  Quarter 
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